Push to widen Jakarta restrictions in new ‘emergency’

Indonesian public health experts have called for nationwide restrictions to arrest surging COVID-19 infections.

A worker stands as people arrive to watch a movie in a temporary drive-in cinema at the Senayan Park in Jakarta. Picture: AFP

Indonesian public health experts have called for nationwide restrictions to arrest surging COVID-19 infections, warning the decision to reimpose a partial lockdown in Jakarta from next Monday would have little impact if it did not also apply to surrounding cities.

Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan announced the new restrictions late on Wednesday, after revealing the city’s hospital system was on the verge of collapse and that the Indonesian capital was facing a COVID-19 “emergency”.

Coronavirus infections in Jakarta have been soaring for weeks with doctors across the city’s 67 COVID referral hospitals warning almost a fortnight ago they were close to capacity and already turning away patients for lack of beds.

“If there is no emergency brake by September 17 Jakarta’s isolation wards will be full. For ICU, the situation is not much better. If the trends continue … they will fill up by September 25,” Mr Baswedan said in a livestreamed press conference. “Jakarta doesn’t have many choices besides to pull the emergency brakes as fast as possible.”

He said the city ­administration hoped to increase bed capacity by 20 per cent but it also had to ­ensure there were enough health workers and equipment to match the extra capacity, “otherwise those beds will also fill up quickly by the second week of October”.

In a written statement issued after the announcement, the ­administration said hospital ­capacity had “exceeded the safe limit and is expected to reach the maximum capacity on September 17, 2020. After that Jakarta health facilities will collapse.”

But with at least 30 per cent of Jakarta’s COVID-19 cases from outside the city, health agency chief Widyastuti warned mobility restrictions would be of limited use unless they “not only apply to Greater Jakarta but also Indonesia as a whole”.

Jakarta regularly accounts for about a third of all new daily cases across Indonesia, which now has 207,203 cases, though less than 5 per cent of Indonesia’s 270 million people live in the capital.

Queensland epidemiologist Dicky Budiman said those figures did not give the true picture, given Jakarta also accounted for almost half the nation’s daily COVID-19 tests. Dr Budiman said Jakarta’s lockdown would only be effective if it included its satellite cities, from where more than three million people travel into the capital each day.

“The central government has a very important role to play here to facilitate for all the surrounding cities to also do the PSBB,” he said referring to the Indonesian acronym for large-scale social restrictions.

“We know those cities are not performing well in terms of cases. It’s not a cheap strategy from a ­social or economic perspective so we have to make it count.”

University of Indonesia epidemiologist Pandu Riono said ­domestic tourism had been a “major factor in the recent surge”, and ­restrictions should apply across Greater Jakarta, home to about 35 million people, if not also to Bali, where weekly cases rose 100 per cent last week on the back of the island’s August reopening.

“The goal here is to reduce ­mobility of people to reduce spread of the virus,” he said, adding a wider lockdown would “buy time” to strengthen testing and tracing, and increase hospital capacity.

From Monday, all non-essential workers in Jakarta must work from home, mass gatherings are banned, all mosques and entertainment venues are closed, and restaurants and cafes restricted to takeaway dining.

Jakarta has reported 1347 deaths from a national death toll of 8456.

The city’s largest COVID ­referral clinic reports it is seeing a fatality rate of 22.3 per cent of all coronavirus cases treated.

Clarification: On August 29, The Australian quoted an Indonesian doctor in “Jakarta Doctors Losing Battle and Their Lives”, saying she was handling up to 15 ICU patients in one shift. In fact, Dr Debryna Dewi Lumanauw manages the isolation ward and was referring to her colleagues at Pertamina Hospital who work in ICU.