The looming COVID-19 crisis just beyond Australia’s borders

Indonesia could struggle to cope with a COVID-19 outbreak. Picture: AFP

As we look around the world, attention is firmly now focused on surging numbers of coronavirus sufferers in the United States and the United Kingdom, with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnston himself in intensive care fighting for his life.

China was the focus at the start of this pandemic, but the number of new cases there has slowed to a trickle, assuming you can believe what its government tells us.

The tragedies in Italy and Spain continue, but the curve in both nations is starting to bend, suggest the worst of the pandemic just might be behind them. Even if there is a long way to go.

In the midst of all of this Australia has done well. Modelling released yesterday highlighting that while we might have acted a week or two later than would have been ideal, Scott Morrison did act two or three weeks early enough to avoid the challenges the US and UK now face.

Shop attendants serve customers behind a sheet of plastic installed to help curb the spread of the coronavirus at a pharmacy in Jakarta. Picture: AP

But the as yet largely ignored looming crisis is just beyond our borders. Indonesia, one of our nearest neighbours and close trading partners is in the early stages of emulating the problems in those nations mentioned which have been brought to their knees by the coronavirus. Only unlike Italy, the UK and US, Indonesia is an underdeveloped nation with very poor health care services, and low numbers of health care workers per head of population. Which is to say nothing about the lack of protective equipment and ventilators to help manage this crisis.

Indonesian officials conduct health screening on 156 migrant workers who arrived from Malaysia at Surabaya airport in Indonesia's East Java. Picture: AFP

As one of the world’s most populated countries, sitting in fourth place with over 270 million citizens, make no mistake, the coronavirus will devastate Indonesia if it takes hold across the population. And it is hard to see how that might be avoided, with other countries that could help in ordinary circumstances in the midst of their own battles against the virus, and hence focused only on themselves.

Not only is Indonesia a poor nation with poor health care services to boot, it has large urban populations living on top of each other with low standards of sanitation. Meaning that the capacity of the virus to spread is heightened in these areas. Policing lock downs and the like designed to bend the curve is also harder in a state like Indonesia.

Men sit spaced apart as a social distancing effort to help curb the spread of the coronavirus in a train station waiting area in Jakarta. Picture: AP

The threat to one of our nearest neighbours is that a high percentage of the population catches the virus, and when that happens the mortality rate is comparably high by world standards because of the lack of resources to help save individual patients.

Doing the maths on such a scenario is a frightening thought.

Australian security experts have often talked about the need to ensure our relationship with our northern neighbour is a good one, and that civil order is well maintained there. The virus may see wholesale change to the political order in a country like Indonesia, which — beyond the humanitarian crisis — has security implications for Australia.

People wearing face masks, amid concerns of the COVID-19 coronavirus, commute on a street in Banda Aceh. Picture: AP

As the new world order in the coronavirus age confirms the “every nation for itself” principle, it is important we prepare for the crisis to our north, and how it might impact on us.

Peter van Onselen is political editor for Network 10 and professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University