TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The North Sumatra Police Chief Inspector General Panca Putra Simanjuntak revealed that the arrested Kimia Farma employees in Kualanamu Airport had committed the crime of utilizing secondhand rapid antigen test kits to test people since December last year.

“The practice of reusing the Covid-19 stick buds was done since December of 2020,” said the police chief at the North Sumatra police headquarters on Thursday, April 29.

Police officially named five suspects with one of them being a Kimia Farma laboratory branch manager located in Medan. From this individual, the authorities discovered that the five perpetrators prepare the rapid antigen test tools in this lab before reusing it.

The suspects would gather the used stick buds - which is an essential tool in extracting samples from people - and would then clean it and repackage it. These tools were then distributed to the Kualanamu Airport.

Police say the suspects were motivated by financial gain. An investigation is currently underway to reveal how many false tests were produced from the use of secondhand rapid test too. The authorities estimate that the Kualanamu Airport serves roughly 200 people per day,

“We confiscated Rp149 million from the suspects,” said the police chief.

Read: Kimia Farma Responds to Alleged Use of Secondhand Rapid Test Kits in Medan

ANTARA