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.