Becoming the new epicenter for coronavirus in Asia, Indonesia broke India’s record of present daily infections. This was amid the highly contagious Delta variant of covid thrashing the world economies by becoming the dominant and most transmissible strain.
While the country earlier recorded less than 10,000 cases a day, Indonesia is now struggling to keep its covid numbers controlled as the figure has crossed 40,000 for 2 days in a row. On Tuesday, the nation registered its highest ever number of cases with 47,899 new cases.
Fear has taken a new hub in Indonesia after it witnessed a sudden surge in infections. The highly transmissible variant of covid is rapidly spreading outside Java, its main island, as well, inducing panic and concerns in officials as they are afraid of healthcare workers and medical supplies, including medicines, getting exhausted due to the increased requirement.
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Though Indonesia is nowhere close to India’s record of May where it reported over 400,000 cases a day, it cannot be ruled out that India houses almost 5 times more people than Indonesia, which has a population of 270 million. Havoc began on Tuesday after the nation registered a sudden jump from 33,000.
Just a month back, Indonesia was reporting 181 fatalities in a day. However, the figure has gone up to 907 on average in the last 7 days. The nation with 5 times less population than India is almost on par with the death rate here as India registers 1,072 daily average deaths.
The scene is similar, if not worse, in other developing nations who are finding it difficult to battle the virus while developed countries are taking one step a day towards a normal life, including the US and the UK.
This is despite vaccines being rolled out, which puts light on the unequal distribution of these essential shots over the world. Financially strong countries are seeming to take the bigger share of vaccines as weaker ones are left with meagre amounts, making them more vulnerable to mutant strains of covid.
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The growing differences in this regard was termed as a “catastrophic moral failure” by World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Moreover, only 10% of Indonesia’s population has been able to get the vaccines while India administered to 14%. The European Union has this percent at 46 while US has vaccinated 52% of its people, as per Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker.
On the comparison scale, Indonesia’s positive covid test rate is 27% while India’s is 2%. According to experts, an increased percent signifies that the government is testing only the most ill patients. However, they have said both India and Indonesia are greatly undercounting their cases and deaths due to the lack of testing infrastructure and resources.
Lockdown and restrictions imposed in Java and Bali from July 3rd to 20th are hindering people from moving around the island without as much ease as the government had predicted. It came out to be 6-16% compared to the government’s expectation of a 20% drop, according to Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin.
On Tuesday during a hearing with lawmakers, he said, “Our hospitals can’t endure it anymore if we fail to reduce movement by at least 20%.”
Earlier, the government had said that they need the mobility to go down by at least 50% to reduce covid spread in the nation.
