Indonesian pharmaceutical workers busted for reusing Covid-19 tests at airport

Up to 9,000 passengers at an airport in Medan may have been tested with the reused swab sticks.

PRETORIA, May 5 (ANA) – Five people are accused of washing and reusing nasal swabs to test for the coronavirus in Indonesia at Kualanamu airport in the city of Medan, ABC News reported on Wednesday.

The Australian publication said the accused were employed by a state-owned pharmaceutical company, Kimia Farma Diagnostika, to conduct rapid antigen tests on passengers since December 2020.

The report quoted the police as saying they estimated that the workers reused swabs from 150 kits up to 20,000 times.

According to the police, up to 9,000 passengers may have been tested with the reused swab sticks, the BBC reported.

The pharmaceutical firm, which is headquartered in the capital Jakarta, has since fired the staff involved and promised to tighten internal controls, the British broadcaster added.

“I strongly condemn the actions of unscrupulous Kimia Farma officers,” Indonesia’s State-owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir said on Twitter.

“Such action must be subject to very strict punishment.”

According to local media reports, authorities have compiled reports from 23 witnesses and are investigating whether the profit from the scam, estimated to be around US$124,800, was used to fund the construction of a lavish house for one of the suspects.

Two lawyers who frequently flew via Kualanamu airport in recent months said they were planning to sue Kimia Farma, the South China Morning Post reported.

ABC News reported that Irma Hidayana, a public health consultant, said the scandal did not come as a shock, because there had been inadequate supervision of Covid-19 testing by the central and local governments.

The report added that authorities had previously detected the sale of falsified letters showing that a person was Covid-19 negative in order to allow them to travel.

Indonesia has seen one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in Asia, according to figures on real-time data portal Worldometer. The country has recorded over 1.6 million case and more than 46,000 deaths.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher