CCTV footage from the hospital showed that the patient, identified by his initials SL, escaped through a window from his isolation room on Tuesday evening.

After escaping from the hospital, SL reportedly walked for about 10 kilometers to reach his home, during which he took a break at a local mosque while waiting for the dawn prayers to begin. 

“From his statement, he performed the dawn prayer at the Wage Mosque, and then he headed to [his home in] Penujak village, and he was finally located by authorities in the morning,” Omdah, who heads the Health Agency in Central Lombok, told Kompas.

Local health authorities in full protective suits arrived at his village in an ambulance yesterday morning, and SL was then taken back to the Praya General Hospital. Officials are now gathering more information to trace his contacts during the escape. 

According to reports, SL had gone to Gowa, South Sulawesi for the Ijtima Jamaah Tabligh event, a large religious gathering in March that was canceled at the last minute by Indonesian authorities for fear of coronavirus spread. 

However, more than 8,000 Muslim pilgrims from across the region had already assembled in the town at that point. The event in Gowa has been identified as a COVID-19 cluster, as dozens of confirmed COVID-19 patients in Indonesia and abroad since then have been traced back to the canceled gathering.

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