Recently, Joko Widodo, the President of Indonesia, announced a lockdown in its main island Java and the tourism destination of Bali. The announcement came after there was a surge in Covid-19 cases in the country.
Currently, in South Asia, Indonesia is the worst hit due to coronavirus cases, with about 2.3 million positive cases and more than 60,000 deaths so far.
The number of Covid infection cases and the death rate has increased immensely this month in Indonesia. The daily Covid burials have increased ten folds in May. Many patients are dying in isolation at home.
However, as per experts, the Covid cases in Indonesia are much higher because of inadequate testing and poor tracing measures.
Hospitals are running out of supplies, with some reports claiming that 63 people have died due to oxygen shortage.
There is also a high number of infections and deaths among the country’s medical frontline workers; the Indonesian Medical Association has said 949 health workers have died from Covid-19 so far.
The hospitals are either shutting or turning away the patients as they run out of beds and oxygen supplies. The hospitals are asking people to donate oxygen. Also, the government is asking people not to buy oxygen because hospitals need them.
Emergency tents outside the hospitals have been set up to accommodate more patients. The government has ordered producers to prioritize the supply of medical oxygen amid outbreaks in Covid cases and oxygen supply shortage.
Indonesia is recording more than 25,000 new cases daily. The highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 and increased travel have intensified the upheaval across the country.
In less than a month, daily cases have more than quadrupled in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation.
The announcement of lockdown is an attempt to curb the latest wave in the country.
As per the new lockdown guidelines, the non-essential employees were asked to work from home. While, Mosques, parks, shopping malls, restaurants, and public leisure facilities were shut in hotspot areas.
The government has claimed that it is working for the worst-case scenario, and also to meet the demands, they have ordered oxygen supply from neighboring countries.
The country is mostly relying on the Chinese Sinovac jabs. The experts are now considering giving a third dose to boost efficacy against the new Delta variant.
Impact on Children:
The sudden loss of jobs and family income could drive millions of children into poverty, leading to worse outcomes in nutrition, education, and child protection while also exacerbating existing inequalities related to gender, loss to businesses, family and national income, and big jolts to vulnerable groups such as children with disabilities.
“Even after the pandemic is over, children throughout Indonesia will continue to feel its impact for years to come,” said UNICEF Representative Debora Comini.
“Unless we act now to counter the socio-economic effects of the pandemic, this health crisis will turn into a much broader crisis that could halt or potentially reverse the years of hard-earned progress made for children in this country,” he added.
With nearly 60 million children out of schools in Indonesia because of COVID-19, online distance learning remains a challenge for many. Missing long periods of education is likely to prevent many students from meeting grade-level knowledge and skill expectations, which could put Indonesia’s social and economic development at risk in the long run.