Indonesian President Joko Widodo yesterday said he planned stricter rules on mobility and social distancing as a study presented to the government warned of a risk of more than 140,000 COVID-19 deaths by May without tougher action.
Medical experts have said the world’s fourth-most populous country must impose tighter movement restrictions as known cases of the highly infectious respiratory illness have gone from zero early this month to 1,414, with 122 deaths.
Indonesia accounts for nearly half of the 250 deaths reported across Southeast Asia, but fewer than one-fifth of about 8,400 cases that have been confirmed in the region. Nearly one-third of those cases are in Malaysia.
Photo: AFP
Most infections in Indonesia have been concentrated in and around the capital, Jakarta. The city of 10 million people has declared a state of emergency which shut down schools and public entertainment, but so far the president has been reluctant to impose a full public lockdown.
“I’m [now] ordering large-scale social limits, physical distancing needs to be done more sternly, more disciplined and effectively,” Widodo told a Cabinet meeting, adding that only the central government could decide on regional quarantines.
Widodo has encouraged social distancing, but questioned whether Indonesians have the discipline for full lockdowns, in contrast with Southeast Asian nations, such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.
However, he appears to have reconsidered this approach after public health experts on Friday presented a prediction model to Indonesia’s planning agency Bappenas underlining a need for stronger intervention to prevent a rapid rise in cases and deaths.
The model, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, said Indonesia could instigate three stages of intervention: mild, moderate and high. The latter would include very significant levels of testing and making physical distancing mandatory.
With mild intervention, which includes optional physical distancing and limiting public crowds, researchers from the University of Indonesia said the virus death toll could soar to more than 140,000 among over 1.5 million cases by May.
“These are just conservative estimates,” said Pandu Riono, one of the researchers. “But we have to be ready even in these circumstances.”
Riono characterized measures currently taken by Indonesia, from rapid testing and deploying regional labs to test samples, as only approaching mild intervention.
Health experts have said onesia faces a surge in coronavirus cases after a slow government response believed to have masked the scale of the outbreak in a country with still very low levels of testing and with a significant deficit in hospital beds, medical staff and intensive-care facilities.
Bappenas officials said the model served as input for the government and to help them allocate budgets.
Indonesian Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati last week said that 62.3 trillion rupiah (US$3.82 billion) of spending in this year’s budget could be redirected to tackling the coronavirus.
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