Man With COVID-19 Tries Skirting Flight Rules by Disguising Himself as His Wife

An Indonesian man found a creative solution to getting around COVID-19 flight restrictions. The COVID-19 positive man managed to fool airport check-in, slip through security, and board a flight from the Indonesian capital Jakarta to Ternate. How? By pretending to be his own wife.

Yes, the man, identified only by his initials, D.W., disguised himself as his wife—donning a head-to-toe niqab and presenting her identification documents as well as his wife’s negative PCR test results.

“He bought the plane ticket with his wife’s name and brought the identity card, the PCR test result, and the vaccination card with his wife’s name. All documents are under his wife’s name,” Ternate police chief Aditya Laksimada reportedly said.

However, the jig was up when he was caught changing clothes mid-flight—a Citilink flight attendant reportedly saw D.W. exit the bathroom a very different-looking person than he was when he went in.

Indonesia is currently in the throes of a sharp COVID-19 spike that, according to data from John Hopkins University, started back in mid-May with continued increases of about a thousand new cases a day, peaking on July 15 with close to 57,000 new daily cases in a day. The recent 14-day total for new cases clocked in at a staggering 627,103—over 19 percent of the country’s total cases for the entirety of the pandemic.

Currently, less than seven percent of the population in Indonesia are fully vaccinated—a far cry from the over 49 percent of fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and residents, and about half as many as the worldwide total of 13.9 percent.

Upon landing, D.W. was arrested and immediately administered a COVID-19 test, which came back positive. Reportedly, he is under investigation and finishing up quarantine at home.