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Police have pounced on a group of airport medical workers suspected of inserting disposable swabs into the nasal cavities of passengers in the usual Covid testing procedure – and then cleaning the swabs and re-using them on other passengers in a major organised scam, producing a startling number of positive Covid results.

A report in the Singapore Straits Times named an airport in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province as the focal point of the suspected racket, which allegedly involved officers of Indonesian state pharmaceutical company Kimia Farma.

Cotton swabs inserted into the nasopharyngeal cavity of passengers in Covid-19 antigen rapid tests at Kualanamu International Airport were removed, washed, and then reused on other passengers, police say. Kualanamu is one of Indonesia’s busiest airports, so the swabs may have been inserted into many nostrils.

Travellers are each charged between 200,000 rupiah (AUD$18) and 300,000 rupiah (AUD$27) for on-site Covid-19 testing at Indonesian airports. They must take the test unless they can prove they have tested negative for the coronavirus in the previous 24 hours.

The North Sumatra provincial police special crime division raided the airport last Tuesday “following a suspiciously high number of complaints filed by people who were turned away from the airport after testing positive”, the paper reported.

Police arrested a number of testers and seized evidence. If convictions result, it could be the first time anywhere that this type of scam has been detected. Bogus negative Covid-test certificates and other fraudulent material connected with the pandemic is available on the dark web, but swabs are not usually involved.

It’s not yet fully understood how the swab scam worked, but media reports yesterday said police had raided a laboratory, arrested five employees and confiscated hundreds of recycled cotton swabs. Police are also reported to have seized thousands of dollars in cash and a laptop, allegedly used to produce documents given to people to certify their test results.

The Straits Times quoted a statement by Kimia Farma’s chief executive Adil Fadilah Bulqini: “We fully support police investigation on the case. What Kimia Farma’s rogue field testers did has harmed the company… and is a severe breach of rule.”

Written by Peter Needham