A Japanese man was recently confirmed to have Covid-19. According to NHK, he had traveled to Indonesia for a family vacation.

The man had developed symptoms and sought medical care on Feb. 12, he returned to work on Feb. 13, and then reportedly traveled to Indonesia on a family vacation on Feb. 15.

He then returned to Japan on Feb. 19, where he was reportedly in a "serious" condition and having difficulties breathing, and was later confirmed to have Covid-19.

Now, all eyes turned to Indonesia. The country that, despite having over two million Chinese tourists a year, has not reported a single case yet.

Here is how they reacted to the news.

Lack of information

One of the difficulties that Indonesia reportedly faced in contact tracing was the lack of information.

As of Monday (Feb. 24), Indonesian authorities have yet to receive any additional information about the confirmed patient, according to The Jakarta Post.

Spokesperson for Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry, Teuku Faizasyah, said that the Japanese authorities have not had any official communication with Indonesia regarding the man.

This is despite Indonesia putting in effort on their part to gather the necessary details.

Directorate General secretary of Indonesia’s Health Ministry’s Disease Control and Environmental Health, Achmad Yurianto, said that contact has been made with the Indonesian Embassy in Tokyo about the man.

Achmad said via The Jakarta Post: “We don’t know his name or which part of Indonesia (he visited). So what can we investigate?”

But they did eventually get the information needed to engage in contact tracing.

According to another Jakarta Post article on Feb. 26, the authorities have started contact tracing in a hotel in Bali that the family had stayed in.

This is the second time a confirmed case have visited Bali.

On Feb. 12, authorities in China’s Anhui province had reported that a Chinese national who visited Bali in late-January had tested positive for Covid-19 upon his return to China.

These two Covid-19 scares have also not resulted in any spike in suspected cases in Bali, according to the Indonesian Health Ministry.

Not Covid-19 at all

In fact, an Indonesian Health Ministry official told Jakarta Post on Monday (Feb. 24) that the confirmed Japanese case was not Covid-19 at all.

Secretary Achmad Yurianto of the Health Ministry's disease control and prevention directorate general reiterated that the Japanese man suffered from SARS-CoV-2, which is different from Covid-19.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), it is stated that SARS-CoV-2 is the virus responsible for the Covid-19 disease.

Viruses and diseases they cause often have different names. For instance, HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.

Disease vs Virus name

The names are different, chiefly because The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses came up with SARS-CoV-2 as the name of the virus, while WHO refers to the disease as Covid-19.

Here's an explanation for the difference in their approach:

"Diseases are named to enable discussion on disease prevention, spread, transmissibility, severity and treatment. Human disease preparedness and response is WHO’s role, so diseases are officially named by WHO in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

ICTV announced “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)” as the name of the new virus on 11 February 2020. This name was chosen because the virus is genetically related to the coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2003. While related, the two viruses are different.

WHO announced “COVID-19” as the name of this new disease on 11 February 2020, following guidelines previously developed with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)."

So, what does the WHO call the virus?

WHO stated that using a virus name with "SARS" in it can result in unnecessary fear, given that Asia was the worst affected by the 2003 SARS outbreak.

Hence, they refer to the virus as the "virus responsible for Covid-19" or "the Covid-19 virus" when communicating with the public.

"Neither of these designations are intended as replacements for the official name of the virus as agreed by the ICTV," they added.

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