Indonesia busts nose swab scam

NEW DELHI/TEHRAN: Authorities in Indonesia have arrested several employees of a trusted pharma company for allegedly washing and reselling used Covid-19 nasal swab test kits over a period of time, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

The report, citing Indonesian police sources, claims that as many as 9,000 passengers at the airport in the Indonesian city of Medan may have been tested with the reused nasal swab kits.

Following the revelation, state-backed Kimia Farma is facing a lawsuit that has been filed on behalf of the passengers who were tested with the kits, the report says.

In a development in Nepal, the BBC has reported that as many as 17 mountaineers at the Everest base camp have tested positive for Covid-19.

Iran and Kenya detect cases of Indian variant

Iran has detected three cases of the Indian Covid-19 variant feared to behind a devastating surge of the disease in India, the health minister said. “We have identified three confirmed cases among the Indians present,” Saeed Namaki said.

A case of the Indian variant was also detected in Kenya.

The case was detected among samples taken from Indian travellers who were working in Kisumu.

Faced with an overstock of the Astrazeneca coronavirus vaccine in her practice unwanted by her patients, Nicola Buhlingergoepfarth, a doctor in western Germany took matters into her own hands on Wednesday and set up shop in a grocery store parking lot, offering it on a firstcome-first-vaccinated basis.