has announced a lockdown on its main island Java, furthermore because of the tourism destination of Bali. The announcement by President Joko Widodo comes because the country battles multiple outbreaks and an alarming spike in Covid cases. Indonesia recently recorded two million Covid cases, attributed to increased holiday travel and also the Delta variant. The lockdown will last a period of time and aims to cut back the number of cases to below 10,000 a day. The country is currently recording quite 20,000 new cases day by day. However, experts warn that the case numbers are potentially much higher, thanks to severely inadequate testing outside Jakarta. Under the new rules, all staff working for non-essential businesses will work from home, and distance learning is going to be implemented across schools. Malls, places of worship, and public leisure facilities like parks also will be shut, with dining-in banned. Businesses including those within the health, security, and energy industries are deemed critical and can be allowed to run at 100% capacity, which suggests all employees can visit work. Others like financial services, which are deemed essential, can run at 50% capacity. Indonesia has had the worst Covid outbreak in South East Asia, with about 2.1 million positive cases and 57,000 deaths to date. The International Federation of nongovernmental organizations and Red Crescent Societies said on Tuesday that the country was “teetering on the sting of a Covid-19 catastrophe”. Sudirman Said, secretary-general of the Indonesian nongovernmental organization said “hospitals were full to the brim and oxygen supplies critically low”, which their hospital in Bogor, West Java, was “overflowing”. “We have founded emergency tents at the hospital to accommodate more patients, with many traveling for hours in order that they can access vital treatment,” he said. Last month, authorities banned domestic travel across the sprawling archipelago at the top of Ramadan, in a shot to curb what’s called “mudik” – the practice of migrant workers traveling back to their hometowns to celebrate Eid with their families. But many flouted the principles. There have also been raising concerns that the spike in cases is because of the more transmissible Delta variant, which was first detected in late May within the Kudus region of Java. Local authorities said this month that quite 350 medical examiners who were already vaccinated had caught Covid. The Indonesian Medical Association has said to this point 949 medical experts have died from Covid-19. Data checks by BBC Indonesian found that of those deaths, a minimum of 20 doctors and 10 nurses had been fully vaccinated with the Sinovac vaccine, CoronaVac. Indonesia has mainly relied on the Chinese vaccine in its inoculation drive, which is ramping upon. Only about 13 million people out of its 270 million population are fully vaccinated thus far. Several epidemiologists told BBC Indonesian that they believed a 3rd recall dose is also needed for doctors, given the presence of the Delta variant similarly because of the efficacy of CoronaVac, which measured 65% in Indonesian trials earlier this year. A newer government study however found that it absolutely was 98% effective in preventing death and 96% effective in preventing hospitalization among medical workers. The outbreaks have concerned many voters, like 40-year-old Malika who lives within the capital Jakarta. She told BBC Indonesian she doesn’t permit her child to go away from the house. “I’m very worried, especially now. I heard that there are such a big amount of children infected by Covid-19 in Jakarta,” she said. “In the past, I didn’t provide it an excessive amount of thought … But now I could not say such a thing.”
Australia - Egypt