The Indonesian Foreign Ministry has been communicating with embassies of foreign citizens diagnosed with COVID-19 and informing them of their condition, the minister said in a virtual press conference here on Wednesday.
Marsudi did not reveal the countries of origin of infected foreigners. She said 306 of the foreign nationals were under monitoring, 144 others had fully recovered from the coronavirus, and 15 had died.
As of April 29, 2020, the government has recorded 9,771 confirmed COVID-19 cases across the country. While 1,391 patients have been discharged from hospital after making a full recovery, 7,596 others remain hospitalized. The death toll from the virus has been recorded at 784.
On Tuesday evening, a Ukrainian couple, identified as Tamara (53) and Andrey (54), were found dead in their apartment in the Kedonganan neighborhood of Badung District in Bali Province.
Head of the Kuta Police's Criminal Investigation Unit, First Inspector Bagus Nagara Baranacita, said investigators did not find any indication that their deaths were related to an act of crime.
Therefore, the bodies of the deceased couple were handled in accordance with COVID-19 protocols, though the police are still awaiting confirmation from the Sanglah Public Hospital's doctors on the cause of their death, he noted.
The coronavirus outbreak initially struck the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019 and then spread across the world, including to countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Indonesian Government officially announced the country's first confirmed cases on March 2, 2020.
Since then, the central and regional governments have made persistent efforts to flatten the coronavirus curve by imposing healthcare protocols and social restrictions.
To break the chain of COVID-19 transmission, large-scale social restrictions have been enforced in several cities, including Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi, and Pekanbaru.
The central government has also banned homebound travel, locally known as ‘mudik', during the fasting month of Ramadhan and the Idul Fitri holiday season. (INE)
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Reporter: Yashinta DP, Rahmad Nasution
Editor: Suharto
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