Health authorities in Batam, Riau Islands have located the woman who allegedly smeared her own face with the saliva of a deceased COVID-19 patient. Unsurprisingly, she, too, has tested positive for the coronavirus.
Related: Woman on the run after spreading deceased COVID-19 patient’s saliva on her face
The woman, identified by her initials HL, has undergone a PCR (swab) test along with her daughter. Batam City’s Head of Health Agency Didi Kusmarjadi said yesterday that HL had tested positive for the coronavirus while her daughter tested negative.
According to reports, authorities picked up HL and her daughter at a private clinic where they were about to undergo a rapid test. A video of the two of them being hauled circulated earlier this week, and they have been brought to the designated COVID-19 hospital on Galang Island.
Despite earlier claims from HL that she smeared her face with the saliva of a deceased COVID-19 patient, Didi said this has not been confirmed. Batam’s COVID-19 rapid response team reportedly started looking for her last Thursday after many of her close contacts tested positive for the viral disease.
“She was just bluffing, it was a one-sided claim. How would she dare, there was no one who saw her smearing the saliva, and there were many people around when it [allegedly] occurred,” Didi said.
HL was one of the people who had picked up the body of a deceased COVID-19 patient, identified as YHG, by force from the morgue at BP Batam Hospital last week.
While YHG’s test results have not come out when he passed away, family and friends were unwilling to wait and instead retrieved his body from the hospital in order to hold a wake at his home.
It was during the retrieval of YHG’s body that HL allegedly dug her fingers into the deceased’s mouth and smeared his saliva onto her face while taunting doctors at the hospital.
Test results later revealed that YHG was infected with the coronavirus and his body was brought back to the hospital so that he could be buried in accordance with COVID-19 protocols.
Twenty-three of the 24 people who picked up YHG’s body were quarantined and subjected to swab tests, with 12 testing positive for the coronavirus as of Saturday evening.
HL, a vendor at a traditional market, was the only one of the 24 who managed to evade health authorities. If she did indeed smear YHG’s saliva on her face, it’s still not yet clear what her motivation was for doing so.
Had HL tested negative for COVID-19, she would have been brought to the police for public disturbance.
As of yesterday, Batam, which is separated from Singapore by the Singapore Strait, has confirmed 480 COVID-19 cases, including 29 deaths.
