Covid Delta Variant: Indonesia faces ‘a far more grim scenario’

Indonesia's daily infections overtake India's as delta variant spreads

By Edward Era Barbacena

Indonesia is now fighting a “worst-case scenario” epidemic, a senior minister said yesterday, adding the government was preparing for a further spike in coronavirus cases as the more virulent Delta variant spreads.

Indonesia surpassed India’s daily Covid-19 case numbers, marking a new Asian virus epicenter as the spread of the highly-contagious delta variant drives up infections in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

The world’s fourth most populous country is struggling to slow Covid-19 transmission even after imposing its “toughest mobility curbs” yet, while its immunisation rate is low, with just 5.8% of its 270 million people fully vaccinated.

Indonesia recorded 56,757 new cases yesterday, surpassing the daily infections tally of India, which at its peak in May saw more than 400,000 daily cases.

“It’s very fair to say that Indonesia is the epicentre of Asia,” said Dicky Budiman, an epidemiologist at Australia’s Griffith University.

Senior minister Luhut Pandjaitan said daily cases could still climb as the Delta variant, first identified in India, has a two- to three- week incubation period.

“We’re already in our worst-case scenario,” Luhut said.

“If we’re talking about 60,000 (daily cases) or slightly more than that, we’re okay. We are hoping not for 100,000, but even if we get there, we are preparing for that,” he added.

The government has converted buildings into isolation facilities, deployed fresh graduate doctors and nurses to treat Covid-19 patients and imported oxygen and drugs, he said.

Indonesia’s food and drug agency (BPOM) has authorised the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin for emergency use against Covid-19, a health ministry official told Reuters. BPOM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

While the World Health Organization has recommended it not be used for Covid-19 patients, it has been used in some countries to treat the respiratory disease, including India.

BPOM also approved the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine yesterday, of which Indonesia will receive 50 million doses.

Hospitals in the densely populated Java island have been deluged in recent weeks, with many struggling to get treatment and hundreds dying in self-isolation.

Luhut also said vaccine efficacy was weaker against the Delta variant spreading fast across Java, but urged people to get inoculated to help prevent serious illness and death.

The government was analysing the situation and would decide whether to extend the restrictions beyond July 20, he said.

COVID 3RD WAVE

The pandemic has killed at least 4,061,908 people since the virus first emerged in December 2019, according to an AFP compilation of official data yesterday.

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus yesterday warned that the pandemic is now in the “early stages” of the third wave, even as he sounded a fresh alarm over a global surge in cases of the Delta variant.

People wearing protective face masks stand with their oxygen cylinders to get them refilled for free amid a surge of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in Jakarta, Indonesia, on 15th July. 

“Unfortunately…we are now in the early stages of a third wave”, Ghebreyesus said.

He also said that China must co-operate better in the probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, the first cases of which were seen in Wuhan in December 2019.

Meanwhile, WHO’s emergency committee warned yesterday that new concerning variants of Covid-19 were expected to spread around the world, making it even harder to halt the pandemic.

“The pandemic is nowhere near finished,” the committee said in a statement, highlighting “the strong likelihood for the emergence and global spread of new and possibly more dangerous variants of concern that may be even more challenging to control”.

About 12 million Australians will be under stay-at-home orders by late yesterday as the country’s second biggest city Melbourne goes into a “hard and fast” lockdown, joining Sydney.

State premier Dan Andrews said he took the decision to return the city — and surrounding Victoria — to its fifth lockdown “with a heavy heart” but it was an “absolute necessity”.

In Tokyo — now just over a week away from the opening ceremony of the virus-postponed Olympics — local authorities recorded 1,308 new cases, the highest number since January.

Also facing chronic shortages of medical supplies is Myanmar, where residents across the coup-hit country’s biggest city defied a military curfew in a desperate search for oxygen to keep their loved ones with Covid breathing.

Millions in Yangon and the second city of Mandalay have been ordered to stay home, but the death toll continues to rise and volunteer teams are stepping in to remove the bodies of victims from their neighbourhoods.

Painting a more optimistic picture despite rising caseloads of its own is neighbouring Thailand, where three more islands opened to vaccinated foreign tourists yesterday as part of the kingdom’s push to revive its battered tourism industry.

The country launched a “sandbox” scheme on July 1, allowing vaccinated travellers to visit Phuket island. Tourists do not have to quarantine in a hotel but cannot leave the island for two weeks.