Indonesia has set up roadblocks to screen for Covid-19 among travellers returning from Eid holidays, as fears rose that mass gatherings and virus variants could trigger a surge of new cases in the world's fourth most-populous nation, Reuters reports.

Police were stopping cars at checkpoints around Jakarta in an attempt to identify and isolate positive cases. They were asking people about their travels, requesting to see test results and instructing some people to undergo tests.

Dicky Budiman, an epidemiologist from Australia’s Griffith University, warned of a coranavirus "timebomb" that any "superspreading or super-strain event" could trigger. "So far Indonesia has had luck, but the luck will not last. I believe in one to three months ahead we will have a very serious situation," he said.

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