Indonesia braces for Covid surge after Eid holiday
Random testing of travellers seeking to spend the Muslim holiday with family found an extraordinary 61 per cent infection rate.
Indonesia is bracing for a post-Eid infection surge after random testing of travellers seeking to spend the Muslim holiday with family found an extraordinary 61 per cent infection rate.
Airlangga Hartarto, the co-ordinating minister for the economy and head of the COVID-19 management and economic recovery taskforce, revealed the figures — since questioned by health experts — in a press conference late on Monday in which he took no questions.
“From an operation, 6742 travellers were randomly tested and 4123 tested positive,” Mr Airlangga said. “As many as 1,686 are in independent isolation and 75 are being treated. As many as 113,694 cars were checked and from that 101,097 were turned back.”
The random testing — using a combination of rapid antigen nasal swabs and the less accurate Indonesia-developed GeNose test, which purports to detect the virus on the breath and is used for initial screening rather than diagnosis — began on April 22 and focused on motorbike traffic.
Indonesia has confirmed more than 1.7 million COVID-19 cases and recorded 47,218 deaths.
The figures appear to support warnings that Indonesia’s infection rate — the region’s highest — is underreported, though some health experts have questioned their reliability.
“If you’re just testing many people from the same car or bus then the chances of all of them being infected is much higher than testing 20 different cars,” ANU medical research fellow Ines Atmosukarto told The Australian, adding a breakdown of positivity rates between the antigen and GeNose tests was also needed. “Nevertheless, of course it’s a worry and I suspect the fact they’ve made this announcement is to make people aware of the dangers of bringing infection back to the kampungs.”
Griffith University-based epidemiologist Dicky Budiman however said the figures reflected a “silent outbreak” across Indonesia as a result of too little testing and rampant community transmission _ even accounting for higher false positives. “It’s not at all surprising to me. There is a silent outbreak happening in Indonesia, unfortunately caused by a young and mobile population. The inflection point will come when they expose the most vulnerable groups, the elderly and those with co-morbidities.”
Fears of a post-holiday surge have risen in recent days as millions of Indonesians have ignored confusing travel bans, imposed from May 6 to May 17, to spend the most important Muslim holiday of the year with extended family.
Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan threw the country’s capital into further confusion on Tuesday by locking down the city through an order to temporarily close all malls, cinemas, cafes and restaurants within designated red and orange infection zones until Sunday.
“Prioritise to be at home. We urge you to not visit each other, whether you’re in the same area or different area … and conduct Eid prayers in your own home,” Mr Anies said in a directive. “Avoid activities that may cause crowds.”
Jakarta’s snap partial lockdown is only the latest in a region experiencing a fresh wave of infections.
Malaysians enter a new lockdown from Wednesday, just as millions of people there too had hoped to join family for the holidays. Thailand has extended until May 17 its partial lockdown _ which has kept gyms, bars, restaurants and malls shuttered since the beginning of the month _ as its national caseload has almost tripled in six weeks to 85,000.
Singapore and Vietnam have extended their mandatory quarantine periods for international arrivals from two to three weeks in response to the detection of more infectious new COVID variants, including those first identified in the UK, India, Brazil and Africa.
Singapore’s COVID-19 multi-ministry task force chief Lawrence Wong has said the variants, with their higher attack rates, “are causing larger clusters than before”, but on Tuesday also warned that the city state may have to live with COVID.
“We are a little red dot, fully plugged into the world, and trade and travel are our lifeblood. For us, these are not just good-to-have. They are existential issues,” Mr Wong, who is also education minister, said.
“In other words, we can keep our borders closed for a short time but not over a prolonged duration.”
On Tuesday, The Philippines confirmed its first two cases of the so-called Indian COVID-19 variant, B. 1.617, in two Filipino workers who returned in April from the United Arab Emirates and Oman, despite temporarily barring travellers from South Asia to try and prevent the variant from entering the country.
The Philippines has been battling a prolonged infection rise that has left hospitals and crematoriums struggling to cope, even as the rollout of vaccinations has been hampered by lack of availability. Less than 1 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and food banks have sprung up across the country to feed millions of people plunged into poverty by the COVID-induced recession.
Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said this week the new restrictions, which will see schools and shops closed until at least June 7, were a necessary response to a surge in daily infections — nearing 4000 new cases a day — and the detection of new variants. “There are now COVID-19 variants that are more infectious while the capacity of the public health system is becoming more critical,” Mr Muhyiddin said.
“(There are also) weaknesses in COVID-19 protocol compliance by some. These (factors) demand the government take drastic action. We succeeded in flattening the COVID-19 infection curve in the first and second wave of the spread of this epidemic. I want to remind that the third wave which we are facing now, is more violent and critical. We have still not won.”
The country has recorded a total of 444,484 cases and 1,700 deaths, with Kuala Lumpur and the popular holiday island of Penang among the worst-affected.
In Vietnam, where the first local transmissions in more than a month were detected on April 29, the government has urged citizens living overseas not to return, fearing they might carry variants with them, and closed down karaoke parlours and bars in the capital Hanoi. A stunning 85 per cent of COVID-19 patients who entered Vietnam from Cambodia had tested positive for the UK variant.
Cambodia’s Hun Sen government is deporting foreigners who violate stay-at-home orders after Chinese workers who disregarded quarantine orders were blamed for a wave of new infections in March and April that lifted the caseload from just 500 in February to more than 10,000 last month.
Additional reporting Chandni Vasandani
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