More than 2,200 people in Indonesia have died with acute symptoms of COVID-19, but were not recorded as victims of the disease, a Reuters review of data from 16 of the country’s 34 provinces showed.
Three medical experts said the figures indicated the national death toll was likely to be much higher than the official figure, which as of yesterday afternoon was 773.
Indonesia has one of the lowest testing rates in the world and some epidemiologists have said that has made it harder to get an accurate picture of the extent of infections in the world’s fourth-most populous nation.
Photo: Reuters
The most current data from the 16 provinces shows there were 2,212 deaths of patients under supervision because they have acute COVID-19 symptoms.
The Indonesian Ministry of Health uses the acronym PDP to classify these patients when there is no other clinical explanation for their symptoms.
The data is collated by provincial agencies daily or weekly from figures supplied by hospitals, clinics and officials overseeing burials. It was obtained by Reuters by checking Web sites, talking to provincial officials and reviewing WHO reports.
The 2,212 deaths were in addition to the deaths of 693 people who had tested positive for COVID-19 in those provinces and were officially recorded as victims of the disease.
The 16 provinces account for more than three-quarters of the country’s 260 million population.
A senior member of the government’s COVID-19 taskforce, Wiku Adisasmito, did not dispute the Reuters findings, but declined to comment on the number of coronavirus victims he believed were to be found among the patients classified as PDP.
He said many of the 19,897 suspected coronavirus sufferers had not been tested because of long lines of specimens awaiting processing at understaffed laboratories.
Some people had died before their sample was analyzed, he said.
“If they have thousands or hundreds of samples they need to test, which one will they give the priority? They will give the priority to the people that are still alive,” he said.
Adisasmito is the most senior public health expert on Indonesia’s COVID-19 taskforce and the press office of Indonesian President Joko Widodo typically refers queries to the taskforce.
According to the ministry’s most recent COVID-19 guidelines, patients classified as PDP are those with acute respiratory illnesses for which there is no clinical explanation other than the new coronavirus.
To be classified as PDP, patients must also have traveled to a country, or an area in Indonesia, where COVID-19 has taken hold within 14 days of becoming sick.
“I believe the vast majority of PDP deaths were caused by COVID-19,” said Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist at the University of Indonesia, citing their COVID-19 symptoms and that there was no other identified cause of death.
The nation’s death toll is now the highest in Asia after China, a Reuters tally showed.
The provincial data follows a report by Reuters this month that burials in Jakarta last month were up by 40 percent on any month since at least January 2018. The city’s governor said that COVID-19 was the only likely explanation.
Indonesia had recorded 9,511 COVID-19 infections as of yesterday. It has conducted 210 tests per million people.
Australia has tested 100 times more per capita, while Vietnam’s testing is about 10 times higher.
“The true infection and death rate are higher than the officially reported data because our tests are still a very low number compared to the population,” said Iwan Ariawan, an epidemiologist from the University of Indonesia.
Widodo’s government has been accused by activists and his political opponents of a lack of transparency in handling the epidemic.
The government says it has taken appropriate measures, but Widodo said last month that some information had been withheld from the public to prevent panic, and last week he said had told his ministers to report COVID-19 data truthfully.
Indonesian Doctors Association chairman Daeng Faqih has urged the government to reveal the national number of suspected COVID-19 patients who had died, but were not tested.
The WHO office in Indonesia also said over the weekend that deaths of suspected COVID-19 sufferers should be disclosed.
Adisasmito said the government was not hiding data and that he was unaware the WHO had called for suspected COVID-19 death statistics to be made public.
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