Indonesia health minister on no coronavirus case in country: 'Blessing from almighty'

Indonesia’s Health minster, Terawan Agus Putranto recently announced that the 134 test samples taken from coronavirus suspects have turned out to be negative. Till now, Indonesia has zero reported cases of the deadly virus. According to international media, the deadly virus infected over 82,000 and has killed at least 2,800 people globally with a vast majority in mainland China. 

"Blessing from the almighty"

While speaking to the international media reporters, he said that if the country still does not have any confirmed case of the virus, then it was definitely a 'blessing from the almighty'. Putranto further said that the tests on two patients who died this week after suffering symptoms associated with the virus had been negative.   

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On Feb. 23, a Singaporean man died after reportedly suffering from fever and shortness of breath in the city of Batam, but the head of the local health agency said this was due to another unspecified disease. In a precautionary measure, Indonesia has barred entry to visitors who have been in China for 14 days and stopped all the flights from the infected nation. 

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First case in Sub Saharan Africa

Nigeria on February 28 announced the first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus in sub-Saharan Africa. "The case is an Italian citizen who works in Nigeria and returned from Milan, Italy to Lagos, Nigeria on the 25th of February 2020," Health Minister Osagie Ehanire said in a statement posted on Twitter. "The patient is clinically stable, with no serious symptoms, and is being managed at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba, Lagos," he added. 

Prior to the case in Nigeria, just two cases had surfaced across all of Africa, in Egypt and in Algeria, a tally that had puzzled health specialists, given the continent's close economic ties with China. The World Health Organization warned earlier this week that African health systems were ill-equipped to respond to the deadly coronavirus outbreak should cases start to proliferate on the continent.