Jakarta: Covid infections have surged in Indonesia, a nation of 270 million people, in the past week, with more than 2 million cases reported as of Saturday, and hospital occupancy rates soared to more than 75 percent in the capital Jakarta and other hard-hit areas.
The country is also grappling with new virus strains, including the highly infectious Delta variant first identified in India.
In Jakarta, the surge in cases has forced hospitals to set up emergency tents, according to Detik news website, which quoted provincial government officials.
In Medan, the capital city of North Sumatra province, Dr Inke Nadia D Lubis, member of the COVID task force in the area, reported that in the last six months as many as 1,800 children have been infected with the virus, including 14 who have died.
More than a third of the cases reported were elementary school-age students, while a quarter were high school-age students, Inke was quoted by Detik as saying.
On Friday, President Joko Widodo said that the country is facing an “extraordinary situation”, vowing to respond with “quick and appropriate policies”.
Nearly 1,000 Indonesian health workers have also died from the virus since the pandemic started, with the country’s medical association confirming on Friday that 401 doctors were among the victims, including 14 who were fully vaccinated.
This month, more than 300 vaccinated doctors and healthcare workers in Central Java were found to have been infected with COVID-19, with about a dozen hospitalised.
The rise of severe cases in inoculated medical workers has raised questions about the China-produced Sinovac jab, which Indonesia is heavily relying on to vaccinate more than 180 million people by early next year.
Clinical symptoms suggest that strain is responsible for a surge in cases in West Java, the medical association’s spokesperson for the province, Eka Mulyana, said.
“In West Java, bed occupancy rates have exceeded 90 percent. Some hospitals’ rates are even more than 100 percent,” he told reporters.
“At this rate, our health system is close to collapse.”
Dozens of communities in Central Java’s Kudus regency were put under lockdown after the Delta variant was detected in local testing samples, causing a sudden spike in virus cases.
The surge has been partly blamed on millions travelling from that region across the Muslim-majority nation at the end of Ramadan last month, despite an official ban on the annual migration.
The Indonesian medical association’s Kudus representative, Ahmad Ipul Syaifuddin, has said the mass movement of people had made it next to impossible to determine where the surge began.
“We have no clue on how to trace and find the first spreader of the Delta cases because the sampling test result came out around three weeks after the mass exodus,” he said.
“My sample was among the tested sampling for the Delta variant. I have already recovered and (have) tested negative now, but I still have a cough.”
Meanwhile, the Jakarta Post reported that among those who were recently infected with the coronavirus is an unnamed Indonesian official, who was travelling to Italy for an international conference.
The official is under quarantine for 10 days after testing positive upon arrival at the Sicilian port city of Catania, where officials from around the world were convening for a series of G20 ministerial meetings.
— AFP, Al Jazeera

KR Desk