Recently, the number of COVID-19 new diagnoses in Indonesia every day has exceeded 20,000. The surge in this wave of epidemics is mainly related to the highly contagious COVID-19 Delta variant and the large number of people moving within the country after the end of the Muslim fasting month in May.
The head of the Indonesian Country Cluster Support Team (CCST) of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said, “We have seen that the COVID-19 Delta variant brings Indonesia closer to the brink of disaster every day.” Call for a better distribution of global COVID-19 vaccines.
In response, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, spokesperson for the Indonesian Epidemic Task Force, said, “The hospital is overcrowded because people are moving around and failing to comply with the epidemic prevention regulations. In addition, the COVID-19 Delta variant is rampant, resulting in a rapid increase in confirmed cases.” Several hospitals in the “red zone” of the epidemic have reported overload, including the isolation bed occupancy rate in the capital Jakarta, which has reached 93% as of the 27th.
Indonesia plans to respond to the epidemic through mass vaccination. However, since January this year, only 13.3 million of the 181.5 million people scheduled to be vaccinated nationwide have completed two doses of vaccination.
In order to curb the spread of the epidemic, the Indonesian authorities will tighten epidemic prevention restrictions starting on the 30th, prohibit use in restaurants, and require people to provide a negative PCR test certificate before taking domestic flights.
