JAKARTA – During the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, cut off from her regular doctor at Gleneagles Hospital in Singapore, Ms Fenny Nelly, 61, made do with regular online consultations and medication that she could buy in Jakarta.

But, as restrictions, including border controls, wore on, the travel agency owner sought recommendations from friends for a local doctor who could treat her rheumatoid arthritis, eventually finding an autoimmune specialist at a hospital in Pluit in northern Jakarta where she lives.…