Several employees of a pharmaceutical company have been arrested in Indonesia for allegedly washing and reselling used Covid nasal swab test kits.

Up to 9,000 passengers at an airport in Medan may have been tested with the reused swab sticks. State owned company Kimia Farma is now reportedly facing a potential lawsuit launched on behalf of the travellers.

Covid nasal swab testing has become routine in many countries hit by the global pandemic. Police said they believed the scam had been happening since last December at Kualanamu airport in Medan, North Sumatra. It is not yet confirmed how they discovered the ruse.

Passengers are required to have a negative test if they want to fly, and the airport offers the option of getting the swabs done on site. Airport authorities had used antigen rapid test kits supplied by Kimia Farma.

Earlier this week, Indonesian authorities said they had identified two cases of the new Covid variant first seen in India. Last month, Jakarta stopped issuing visas for foreigners who had been in India in the previous 14 days.

The Muslim majority nation has also banned domestic travel at the end of Ramadan this month, a period which traditionally sees people travelling across the country to visit relatives and introduced heightened restrictions for other dates.

Indonesia has seen one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in Asia and overall has recorded about 1.7m positive cases and more than 46,000 deaths linked to the pandemic.