Evacuating Indonesian Citizens from the Disease Outbreak in China

The government has made the right decision to evacuate Indonesian citizens from China.

KOMPAS/P RADITYA MAHENDRA YASA

Medical workers wheel a “patient” into an isolation room during an emergency medical drill for first-responder treatment of suspected coronavirus patients on Thursday (30/1/2020) at Kariadi Central General Hospital (RSUP) in Semarang, Central Java. The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which is believed to have spread to humans from an animal reservoir in Wuhan, China, is thought to transmit from person to person.

The decision to evacuate Indonesian citizens from Hubei province in central China, the place of origin of the new type of coronavirus, which was first detected in December 2019, was once again the correct decision. A month after its appearance, the spread of the virus expanded and claimed a greater number of victims. Chinese news agency, Xinhua, Thursday (30/1/2020), released official information from the Chinese health authorities that said cases of the new type of coronavirus spread throughout 31 regions at the provincial level in the country.

The number of victims continues to grow. Data as of Thursday showed that the death toll from the new coronavirus outbreak in China increased by 29 percent from the previous day: from 132 to 170. The number of confirmed cases jumped from 5,974 cases the previous day to 7,711 cases. It should be underlined, the surge in casualties and cases occurred after the Chinese government did its utmost to suppress the spread of the virus.

Not only extending to all provinces in China, the new coronavirus also spread to 15 other countries, such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. The World Health Organization (WHO) convened Thursday to determine whether a global emergency status was needed in new coronavirus cases, such as the H1N1 virus pandemic (2009), the Ebola epidemic in West Africa (2014), the zika virus (2016), and the ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2019).

ANTARA FOTO/ALOYSIUS JAROT NUGROHO

A family member points out Hilyatu Millati Rusydiyah, an economics student at the Chongqing University School of Economics and Business Administration (SEBA), in a photograph on Wednesday (29/1/2020) at their home in Malangan, Tulung, Klaten, Central Java. Hilyatu’s family is hoping that the government will soon evacuate all Indonesians from China in response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.

In the country, the government of Indonesia has set a number of preparedness measures to anticipate the transmission of the virus. So far, and hopefully it can continue to be maintained, no cases have been confirmed positive with the new coronavirus in Indonesia. Jakarta\'s attention is also given to the fate of 243 Indonesian citizens in Hubei. The attention of the government of Indonesia through the Indonesian Embassy to the Indonesian citizens there, was reported by British media, which quoted the husband of an Indonesian woman in Wuhan, as "proactive".

The government, through President Joko Widodo\'s instruction, also decided to evacuate 243 Indonesians from Hubei. Previously, evacuations were carried out by the government from Egypt in 2011 and Yemen in 2015 due to political turmoil and war. Of course there are complexities and standard procedures that must be carried out and obeyed, both before, during and after evacuation.

It is not enough to ensure the health and quarantine status of the residents to be repatriated and their transportation, this time the evacuation must also ensure that there is health and quarantine supervision according to the procedures that apply to them upon arrival in the country. This procedure is standard and is run by any country that is evacuating its citizens from China. By carrying out all standard evacuation procedures, it is expected that this country will be able to avoid the transmission of the deadly virus.