New coronavirus epicentre East Java in tough battle to reduce deaths

Over just four days, Covid-19 decimated half of Surabaya resident Dea Winnie Pertiwi's family, killing her parents and eldest sister, who was eight months pregnant.

Their deaths happened as May crossed into June, just as the coronavirus was tightening its grip on East Java province, including its capital Surabaya, home to three million.

Ms Dea said her family members were severely ill by the time they were admitted to hospital in late May, but tests were slow in coming.

After the deaths, Ms Dea, her elder sister, and eldest sister's husband and 18-month-old daughter also tested positive for the disease, but they went on to recover.

"It was like a nightmare and I was very shocked," the infrastructure contractor, 27, told The Sunday Times over the phone last Monday.

"Before Covid-19 hit my family, I didn't realise how dangerous and deadly it was."

Her family members had developed symptoms in mid-May, but had believed them to be a result of flu and had taken over-the-counter drugs for it.

But the virus was making serious inroads into East Java by then.

As of yesterday, 1,572 people in the province had died due to Covid-19, double Jakarta's 755 deaths, according to official figures. East Java recorded 20,256 infections, overtaking Jakarta's 18,741.

The East Java province has assumed the Indonesian capital's mantle as the epicentre of the pandemic.

The most crucial task for East Java is reducing the number of deaths, said epidemiologist Windhu Purnomo of Airlangga University.

By yesterday, the province's case fatality rate (CFR), the ratio of deaths to confirmed cases, was 7.8 per cent, above the national figure of 4.8 per cent.

"The rise of the CFR is an issue at overloaded hospitals," he said.

Across the province, Covid-19 has also killed a fair number of health workers, a sign of how the healthcare system has struggled to cope with the pandemic.

So far, 116 doctors had tested positive for Covid-19, 21 of whom have died, said chairman of East Java's branch of the Indonesian Doctors Association, Dr Sutrisno. The disease had also infected 354 nurses, 11 of whom have died, he added.

"There were so many patients, especially those without symptoms, (at the hospitals) and they were not easily recognised by the doctors at the initial stage," he said.

Dr Joni Wahyuhadi, who leads the curative management team of East Java's Covid-19 task force, acknowledged that some hospitals had been overwhelmed when the number of cases rose sharply last month.

Dr Joni, president director at the Dr Soetomo General Hospital in Surabaya, said when infections surged early last month, its emergency unit was swamped with patients.

He added that while 300 hospitals are ready to take in Covid-19 patients, some are overloaded while others are lacking patients.

Putting those with mild to moderate symptoms and those with severe symptoms in different hospitals has helped even the load, he said.

Epidemiologists have warned that East Java faces an uphill battle as new cases continue to rise, and without sufficient testing, the chain of infections cannot easily be broken.

Dr Windhu said that with a 40 million population, the province needs at least 40,000 weekly tests to be in line with the World Health Organisation's testing benchmark.

"Our testing capacity has indeed improved with 4,500 tests per day. But ideally, we need 5,700 daily tests, so we must catch up," he said.

Ensuring that the public observe health protocols is also key to lowering infections, Dr Sutrisno said.

"Resilient villages" have been established across East Java in areas with a high number of cases to ensure people comply with the protocols, such as the wearing of masks and temperature-taking. Surabaya has also introduced a similar initiative.

Businessman Chusnan Marzuki, a resident of Bratang Binangun in Baratajaya village, Surabaya, said the neighbourhood of up to 70 households has taken measures, such as adopting a one-gate system and spraying disinfectant in public places regularly, to prevent the spread of the virus. "The situation in our neighbourhood is under control. There has been no one testing positive so far," he said.

Said Ms Dea: "I hope people obey the health protocols. I hope they won't believe Covid-19 is as dangerous as it is only when they contract it themselves, or when they lose their family."