Scammers Reused COVID Nasal Swabs on Thousands of People, Police Say

Police in Indonesia have broken up an icky scam in which COVID-19 nasal swabs were allegedly reused on thousands of unsuspecting passengers who needed to buy and take the tests to travel by air.

Late last month, authorities in the northern city of Medan arrested five employees of state-owned pharmaceutical company Kimia Farma after they were accused of allegedly washing, repackaging and reusing rapid antigen nasal test kits at North Sumatra’s Kualanamu airport. The story has only grown bigger since as more details emerge. 

The scam may date back to December and the perpetrators are believed to have netted thousands of dollars testing dozens or more passengers a day. An undercover police officer posing as a passenger was apparently involved in helping detect the alleged ruse.

It may have affected up to 10,000 passengers over time, police spokesperson Hadi Wahyudi told CNN, adding that authorities were still investigating. Officers also found discarded cotton swabs and recycled packaging during raids.

Suspects received orders from the business manager at Kimia Farma in Medan, North Sumatra Police Chief Inspector General RZ Panca Putra Simanjuntak said in an interview with local newspaper Kompas. 

The company worked with a state-owned enterprise to provide COVID-19 tests to passengers, which are required to board flights in the pandemic-ravaged country. A subsidiary of Kimia Farma told VICE World News in a statement that the company was cooperating with the investigation and would “conduct a thorough evaluation to prevent this from happening again”.

Indonesia has experienced one of the worst outbreaks in Southeast Asia, recording more than 1.7 million cases and close to 46,500 deaths. 

News of the scandal has gripped the public, and there is rumbling of class action lawsuits. But the fallout could also extend to damaged faith in the government’s pandemic response.

“It’s such a dangerous thing to do. There is a risk of passing COVID-19 to other people, and it will impact the test result’s accuracy,” Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist and researcher at Australia’s Griffith University, told VICE World News.

“[Lack of] trust can make things worse. There’s a possibility that conspiracy theorists would make false claims like, ‘so it’s all because of the government that we’ve tested positive!’ It would also have a collateral effect at other testing sites,” he said, adding that people would suspect that the government or hospitals are trying to reap profits from the test kits.

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Additional translation by Annisa Nurul Aziza