Highlights:
- The country’s daily case count has already surpassed 40,000 for two days in a row which was less than 10,000 just a month ago.
- Indonesia recorded 47,899 new COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, while India reported 31,443 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the lowest number in 118 days.
- Indonesia has only vaccinated 10% of its population, 14% in India, according to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker, compared to 46% in the European Union and 52% in the US.
As the emergence of the extremely contagious delta variant drives up infections in Southeast Asia’s largest economy, Indonesia has overtaken India’s daily Covid-19 case numbers, making Asia’s new viral epicentre.
The country’s daily case count has already surpassed 40,000 for two days in a row, reaching a new high of 47,899 on Tuesday, up from less than 10,000 just a month ago. Officials are afraid that the new, more transmissible strain is now spreading outside of the country’s major island, Java, which can exhaust medical employees and oxygen and drug supplies.
The current figures in Indonesia are still far behind India’s peak of 400,000 daily cases in May. On Tuesday, daily infections in India, which has a population of about five times that of Indonesia’s 270 million people, fell below 33,000 as the deadly outbreak waned.
In the last seven days, Indonesia has reported an average of 907 deaths each day, up from 181 a month before, and India has reported an average of 1,072 daily fatalities.
Even as vaccine rollouts allow life to return to normal in places like the United States and the United Kingdom, developing countries are battling to contain the virus, particularly due to delta’s rapid spread.
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According to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker, Indonesia has only vaccinated 10% of its population and India has vaccinated 14%, compared to 46 percent in the European Union and 52 percent in the United States. The developing world is suffering the burden of soaring case counts and death tolls due to a lack of vaccines, with global fatalities topping 4 million earlier this month.
The positive Covid test rate in Indonesia has reached around 27%, while it is only 2% in India. Larger figures imply that the government is only testing the sickest cases and that the community is infected at a high level. Both countries, according to experts, are substantially undercounting cases and deaths due to a lack of testing infrastructure.
From July 3 to July 20, the government enforced curbs on Java and Bali, which did not ease people’s travels as much as the administration had hoped.
Residents’ mobility has only eased by 6% to 16% since the limits were implemented, despite authorities expecting a 20% decline, according to Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin, who spoke before parliament on Tuesday. The administration has previously stated that reducing Covid’s spread would necessitate a 50% reduction in mobility.
“If we don’t reduce movement by at least 20%, our hospitals won’t be able to bear it any longer,” Sadikin warned.
