COVID-Positive Man Boards Plane Disguised As Wife; What Happens Next?

Picture courtesy AP

A man who had tested positive for coronavirus boarded a domestic flight in Indonesia disguised as his wife.

He fooled the authorities at the airport by wearing a niqab to cover his face, and carried fake IDs and a negative RT-PCR report.

But he couldn’t pull of his trickery too long, and was caught, reported AP.

According to police officials, a flight attendant on the Citilink flight travelling from Indonesian capital Jakarta to Ternate in North Maluku province noticed that the man changed his clothes in the lavatory.

“He bought the plane ticket in his wife’s name and brought the identity card, RT-PCR test result and vaccination card with his wife’s name. All documents were in his wife’s name,” the police chief in Ternate said after the man was arrested on landing.

He was taken for a COVID-19 test, and he again tested positive.

The man is currently self-isolating at home, but police said the investigation will continue.

Indonesia, witnessing a spike in coronavirus cases, is the current COVID hotspot in Asia. The country reported 33,772 new cases and 1,383 deaths in the last 24 hours. The total cases since the pandemic broke has gone up to 2.9 million, while there have been 77,583 fatalities.