With the many countries experiencing fear following the novel coronavirus outbreak, Indonesia had no confirmed cases of COVID-19. This raised concerns about the country’s detection ability.
Just after several times questioned by other countries why Indonesia had yet to report its first coronavirus case, the Southeast Asian country confirmed its first two COVID-19 patients.
President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo announced on Monday that a 31-year-old woman (Case 1) and her 64-year-old mother (Case 2), both residents of Depok, West Java was tested positive for the novel Wuhan coronavirus.
This happened after Case 1 made contact with a Japanese woman who was later tested positive for the virus in Malaysia on February 27.
When Case 1 and Case 2 are "treated as patients under supervision" in an isolation ward at Sulianti Saroso Infectious Diseases Hospital (RSPI Sulianti Suroso) in North Jakarta, they said that the media coverage and the discourse on social media have taken a greater toll on them than the disease itself.
They said that people, the media, and the internet have numerously breached their privacy.
The President’s announcement surprised not only the public, but to the two patients themselves.
“We had not been [told that we had tested positive],” she said. “We only found out when [Jokowi announced it].”
“When we received information [about the Japanese citizen] a team in Indonesia immediately traced who the Japanese citizen met with,” Jokowi told reporters at the State Palace on Monday. “We checked [the two people] and this morning I received a report from the Health Minister that they tested positive for the coronavirus.”
The worse came afterwards.
Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto said that Case 1 was a dance instructor. He said that Case 1 had danced with a her Japanese friend at on February 14 in Amigos, a club in Kemang, South Jakarta.
"On February 16, [the patient] coughed a lot, prompting her to visit to a hospital and returned home afterward. She then asked on February 26 to be hospitalized because her coughing hadn’t stopped. On February 28, she received a call from her Japanese friend that [the latter] was being hospitalized in Malaysia after having tested positive for coronavirus," said Terawan said in a press conference at the RSPI on Monday afternoon.
Just after the news broke, their personal details including name, age, physical address, photos, social media accounts and all, have been shared on WhatsApp groups.
Some people even went as far as to speculate and question the patient's profession, correlating to how she might have contracted the virus in the first place, which had then also affected the privacy of their neighbors.
The message that went viral also detailed their symptoms and the chronology of the event, starting from when they had supposedly contracted the virus to when they were eventually admitted to the hospital.
Reporters came to the patients' house, taking photos and videos. They even came too close to the property that the police had to set up a police line to keep them away.
As the news of Indonesia's first cases of coronavirus unleashed panics with citizens starting to stockpile, hoax messages and fake news began to circulate rapidly.
"Mentally drained," the situation caused Case 1 to write a lengthy WhatsApp message to clarify the case, which has also gone viral.
She also shared her own chronology on how she might have contracted the virus and what she did afterward, which apparently was different to the one shared by the authorities.
Case 1 explained that she started coughing and felt sick with a fever. She then visited a hospital with her mother, where she was diagnosed with bronchopneumonia and her mother with typhus. The following day, her friend in Malaysia called her to let her know that a Japanese woman that had tested positive for the virus had visited a restaurant in Jakarta where she had been hosting.
"I was just in a room with the Japanese woman without knowing who she was.”
"Please respect me and my family’s privacy, stop spreading our photos and fake news about us."