DILI (Reuters) – East Timor reported its first case of coronavirus, its Ministry of Health said on Saturday, adding that the case was from someone who had just returned from abroad.
The ministry said the patient posed little risk to the public, as he immediately consulted with doctors after showing symptoms of the coronavirus.
“He isolated himself immediately after contacting doctors,” the ministry said in an official Facebook post, without giving details of where the patient traveled from.
The tiny Southeast Asian nation with a population less than 1.3 million was formally part of Indonesia until 2002, and is located east of the Indonesian archipelago.
The governor of Jakarta on Friday declared a state of emergency in the Indonesian capital for the next two weeks over the coronavirus outbreak as the death toll in the country climbed to the highest in Southeast Asia.
(Reporting by Nelson Da Cruz in DILI; Writing by Fathin Ungku in SINGAPORE. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
