All four cases involve persons who came from abroad to East Timor. One foreigner has already recovered. On Friday (10 April) SIJK announced that one Timorese who stayed in the Katuas Hotel in the capital city Dili, where people who have arrived from abroad are staying in quarantine, was tested positive for COVID-19. SIJK stated there were 37 Timorese in the Katuas Hotel. The medical team then began testing all 37 persons.

On Sunday (12 April) around 8:30pm, an ambulance visited the Katuas Hotel twice. SIJK confirmed on Monday (13 April) there were indeed two new patients, who have been transferred from the hotel. ‘Now they are in Vera Cruz isolation center. Fortunately their condition is good: no cough, no fever,” said Odete Viegas, who is part of the SIJK team and the general director of health care at the Ministry of Health, when she updated the media in the Dili Convention Center, Monday (13 April), about the corona crisis.

Odete Viegas stated that SIJK is tracing back the contact history of confirmed COVID-19 cases. The Timorese patient who was tested positive for the virus, had travelled with a group of 8 other Timorese from Kupang, the capital city of West-Timor. They crossed the border with East Timor at Batu-gede. In the meantime that group has been tested, which led to two more confirmed cases. Odete explained that at Batu-gede, the Timorese patient took a bus coming from the city of Maliana to Dili, together with 25 more Timorese, including the bus driver and the bus aide. “We have done testing for all these people,” Odete said.