Renewed calls for lockdown in Indonesia as cases surge

Thirty doctors have died of Covid-19 so far this month in Indonesia, as the country battles a second wave of infections driven by the Delta variant, triggering renewed calls to impose a nationwide lockdown or risk a dire situation such as that in India.

In a statement yesterday, the Indonesian medical doctors' association (IDI) appealed to the government to impose at least a two-week hard lockdown, especially in Java, adding that maximum enforcement is required. Java is the most populous island where the capital Jakarta is located.

Dr Adib Khumaidi, head of IDI's mitigation team, flagged some grim statistics in several epicentres in Java at an online briefing.

He said Kudus, the smallest regency, recorded 231 doctors who are currently hospitalised or in self-quarantine at home.

Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Jakarta are among the regions that also saw high casualty numbers among the doctors.

The 30 doctors who died this month included four yesterday, bringing the total death toll for doctors since the pandemic started to 405, according to IDI.

The country's total number of Covid-19 cases is now 2.12 million, and the casualty toll is 57,138.

Dr Adib warned of the possibility of Indonesia having a dire outbreak like the India scenario, citing its overloaded hospitals and a lower testing rate than India's.

"Merely adding (hospital) beds isn't enough. An ample number of medical human resources is key. The current situation is that a lot of our fellow medical workers are infected, doing self-isolation, hospitalised," said Dr Adib.

He added that a number of hospitals could be considered as having collapsed, warning that if no drastic step is taken, the whole healthcare system could also collapse.

India had its first surge last September when its total number of active cases soared above one million, before falling to about 137,000 in mid-February. The cases then spiked again and reached the peak at around 3.7 million last month after pandemic fatigue set in, with people flouting restriction rules.

Last Friday, Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin announced the government would convert more hospital beds to treat Covid-19 patients. At least two major, newly built government subsidised housing towers in the capital will be turned into facilities to treat patients with mild symptoms.

Yesterday, calls to impose a large-scale lockdown - rather than the current localised ones - also came from the legislative branch, with Parliament's health committee deputy chairman Charles Honoris issuing a statement telling the government to at least impose a hard lockdown on Java.

Indonesia's epidemiological curve is described as "nearly being a vertical line, resembling that of India's in April", he told The Straits Times last evening.

Meanwhile, Indonesia yesterday issued an emergency use approval for the Sinovac vaccine to be used on people aged between 12 and 18.