Indonesia’s COVID-19 cases are nearing 2 million, with hospitals starting to fill up as the country grapples with the highly transmissible Delta variant of the virus.
The government confirmed 13,737 new cases on Sunday, bringing the total to 1.99 million.
Deaths have begun to pick up as the COVID-19 hospitalization rate exceed 70 percent in 87 cities across the country, with 371 people dying from the disease on Sunday — the worst since April, government data showed.
Photo: Reuters
“Because this is concentrated in certain regencies and cities, we can still mobilize resources from other areas,” Indonesian National Nurses Association chairman Harif Fadhillah said. “If we let this continue, the situation can become urgent and critical.”
Indonesia is heavily relying on vaccines to stem the pandemic, with a pledge to administer 1 million doses per day next month, as well as movement restrictions.
All non-essential businesses must stop operating at 8pm, while religious and social gatherings are banned in areas most at-risk, Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto said yesterday.
The police and army have been deployed to ensure compliance, and the measures are effective through July 5, he added.
The Delta variant, which was first detected in India and has since spread globally, was a dominant strain in Kudus and Bengkalan towns in Java, which have became virus hot spots along with Jakarta.
The rate of hospitalization in Jakarta has exceeded 90 percent, even if the government could add more as there are a total of 34,000 beds with 17,300 allocated for virus patients, Indonesian Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin told a news conference.
The capital is in need of 1,179 more healthcare workers, while neighboring West Java Province needs 400, Fadhillah said.
“The government isn’t choosing between health and the economy,” Sadikin said. “The president has ordered for the health issue to be resolved first, because the economy won’t move if the health issue isn’t resolved.”
The recent surge in infections had been predicted by the government, which last month forecast that cases could rise by 40 to 60 percent in the four to five weeks after the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
A persistent increase in cases could threaten recovery in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, which last year saw its first contraction in two decades.
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