JAKARTA: A 53-year-old woman has died from coronavirus in Indonesia, the first recorded death from the virus in the Southeast Asian country, a health ministry official said on Wednesday.
The woman, a foreign national, had already been in critical condition when she was admitted to a hospital, said Achmad Yurianto, the health ministry official.
Yurianto did not say where the woman was from or in what hospital or city she had died, but said her home country’s embassy was aware of her death and would arrange to have her body repatriated.
Indonesia has 26 other confirmed coronavirus patients.
Meanwhile, shops and restaurants closed, hundreds of flights were canceled and streets emptied across Italy on Tuesday, the first day of an unprecedented, nationwide lockdown imposed to slow Europe’s worst outbreak of coronavirus.
Just hours after the dramatic new restrictions came into force, health authorities announced the death toll had jumped by 168 to 631, the largest rise in absolute numbers since the contagion came to light on Feb. 21.
The total number of confirmed cases rose at a much slower rate than recently seen, hitting 10,149 against a previous 9,172, but officials warned that the region at the epicenter, Lombardy, had provided incomplete data.
