[News] Covid-19: Indonesia announces lockdown in Java and Bali as cases surge

[Mr.Talha]

 

The announcement by President Joko Widodo comes as 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 the Delta variant.

The lockdown will last two weeks and aims to reduce the number of cases to below 10,000 a day.

The country is currently recording more than 20,000 new cases each day.

However, experts warn that the case numbers are potentially much higher, because of severely inadequate testing outside Jakarta.

Under the new rules, all staff working for non-essential businesses will have to work from home, and distance learning will be implemented across schools.

Malls, places of worship and public leisure facilities like parks will also be shut, with dining-in banned.

Businesses including those in the health, security and energy industries have been deemed critical and will be allowed to run at 100% capacity, which means all employees can go to work. Others like financial services, which have been 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 so far.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Tuesday that the country was "teetering on the edge of a Covid-19 catastrophe".

Sudirman Said, secretary-general of the Indonesian Red Cross said "hospitals were full to the brim and oxygen supplies critically low", and that their hospital in Bogor, West Java, was "overflowing".

"We have set up emergency tents at the hospital to accommodate more patients, with many travelling for hours so they can access vital medical care," he said.

Last month, authorities banned domestic travel across the sprawling archipelago at the end of Ramadan, in an attempt to curb what is known as "mudik" - the practice of migrant workers travelling back to their hometowns to celebrate Eid with their families. But many flouted the rules.