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First it was planeloads of cruise ship crew members arriving back in Indonesia via Bali's Ngurah Rai airport. Now there are four cruise ships bringing them back via Bali's Benoa port over 4 days. First of them, Voyager of The Seas, docked today (16 April). thebalisun.com/first-of-4-cru…
Voyager of the Seas carried 232 crew, of which 117 reside in Bali. The rest are from other regions in Indonesia. All tested negative for #COVID19 via rapid tests, according to the head of Bali's Covid-19 task force, Dewa Made Indra.
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“The commitment that we have agreed with the central government is that the ship is allowed to dock in Benoa," he said in a media statement yesterday (15 April). "Then the Bali Province Task Force rapid test team will board the ship to conduct a rapid test."
Anyone testing positive to the rapid test will be taken to a provincial government quarantine facility to undergo swabs for Polymerase Chain Reaction testing. Those without symptoms will remain in quarantine while those who test positive will be taken to hospital for isolation.
All returning crew members who test negative will be picked up by Bali government authorities and taken into quarantine in a state run facility as well. Once a 14 day quarantine is complete they will be allowed to travel back to their home regions.
This marks a major change in strategy from that which applied when the crew members first began returning by plane in March. At that time, the requirement for those who tested negative was that they quarantine at home for 14 days.
All were meant to have been screened in the country from which they were departing but on 8 April, Bali Governor Wayan Koster announced that 15 returning crew members had tested positive & Bali's confirmed cases jumped accordingly. coconuts.co/bali/news/15-i…
The same day, Indonesia's Foreign Ministry announced that 92 Indonesian crew members aboard a number of international cruise liners had tested positive for #COVID19 as at 8 April. thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/0…
The Foreign Ministry's data showed at that time that an estimated 12,748 Indonesians worked as crew members aboard 89 cruise ships around the world operated by 10 major cruise operators. About 1000 had already returned via Bali as at 8 April.
According to the Bali Sun report from 22 March to 14 April , the Bali Provincial Task Force for COVID-19 had processed 7972 migrants workers returning home to Indonesia. All were undergoing rapid testing.
Just as every one of the Voyager of the Seas' 232 crew reportedly tested negative on their return to Bali today, it was the same with every one of the 316 crew members of the MSC Splendida cruise ship who arrived at Ngurah Rai Airport on Mar 31.
The Bali authorities may well have been expecting nothing less than that because they had insisted to the Foreign Ministry that all returning crew members undergo screening before they were brought back, & that only those who tested negative could return.
Temperature checks & rapid tests on every cruise ship crew member arriving in Bali were meant to be a backup for the overseas testing but only today, Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan condemned the rapid tests as ineffective with a high potential for error.
The Jakarta Post reported in the news article above that the migrant worker repatriations had given rise to worries of potential imported cases, because international cruise liners like the Diamond Princess, World Dream, Westerdam & Zaandam had emerged as #COVID19 "hot spots".
At his 8 April media conference announcing that 15 crew members had tested positive for #COVID19, Bali Governor Wayan Koster said that with so many crew members returning from the United States & Italy, the number of positive cases among them was likely to rise.
Looking at the provincial government's website, it doesn't appear they are reporting specific returning migrant worker data there though they do have a special category for foreigners (Warga Negara Asing - WNA) who test positive. pendataan.baliprov.go.id
As the New York Times reported, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan — once heralded for early successes in battling the pandemic — are now confronting a new wave of coronavirus cases, largely fueled by iinfections coming from elsewhere. Imported cases. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
That said, Bali officials have appealed to the public not to stigmatise returning migrant workers as “COVID-19 carriers". Some market vendors had even gone so far as to refuse customers from villages with a confirmed COVID-19 patient. coconuts.co/bali/news/bali…
Bali's #COVID19 task force chief, Dewa Made Indra said the migrant workers, including thousands of crew members returning from their cruise ships. “They have undergone quarantine by the companies that employ them and they all carry health certificates," he said.
Some tested positive after lab tests in Bali. "They didn’t deliberately bring [the disease] because they never knew they were infected," Indra said. “They are also our brothers & sisters, our children. They do pose some risks, but don’t give them the stigma of disease carriers."
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