What If It Turns Out That Only Two Percent Of COVID-19 Cases Have Been Detected In Indonesia?

President Joko Widodo (Instagram / @ jokowi)

JAKARTA - Indonesia has serious problems related to handling COVID-19. From the medical side, Indonesia recorded a significant deficit in terms of health facilities, including hospital beds and a number of other intensive care facilities. What is also sad is that Indonesia does not have enough medical staff.

Exposure to data reviewed by foreign media, Reuters also included warnings from health experts about Indonesia which will become the new epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest data, Thursday, March 26, saw the addition of 103 positive cases of COVID-19. This means that the cumulative number of COVID-19 in Indonesia has now reached 893 cases.

Meanwhile, for patients who died, Indonesia recorded the highest cases in Southeast Asia with 78 deaths. All this chaos has occurred because the government has been slow to deal with this problem from the start. Referring to the same report, experts estimate that COVID-19 cases are much higher than reported cases due to low testing rates and high mortality.

A study by the Mathematical Modeling Center for Infectious Diseases based in London, UK, estimates that only two percent of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia are monitored in reports. This data was released last Monday, March 23. This means that there are actually around 34,300 positive cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia, more than the COVID-19 cases in Iran.

Other modeling projects that the worst-case scenario for COVID-19 in Jakarta could increase to five million by the end of April. Only in Jakarta. "We have lost control, the virus has spread everywhere. Maybe we will follow Wuhan or Italy. I think we are in that range," said Ascobat Gani, a public health economist, quoted by Reuters, Thursday, March 26.

Even so, the Indonesian government disagrees. Government Spokesperson for Corona Virus Handling Achmad Yurianto said the impact of the virus would not be that bad. "We will not be like that," he said, responding to the comparison of the Indonesian case with Italy and China.

"The important thing is that we mobilize people to keep our distance," added the man who is familiarly called Yuri.

Spokesperson for Handling COVID-19 Achmad Yurianto (Special)

Health system

The big spotlight is of course the Indonesian health system which is considered very bad compared to other countries of the same fate affected by COVID-19. Indonesia, which is supported by 260 million people, only has 321,544 hospital beds. The data that is difficult to dispute by Yuri because it refers directly to data from the Ministry of Health.

In mathematical calculations, that condition is equal to 12 beds for every 10 thousand people. This figure is far compared to South Korea, which has 115 beds for every 10,000 people, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Others, related to health workers. In 2017, WHO noted that Indonesia had four doctors per 10,000 people. Meanwhile, Italy has ten times as much. Meanwhile, South Korea has six times as many doctors. The hospital was clearly not ready.

“Hospitals are not ready to support potential cases. Treatment is very limited, "said Budi Haryanto, an epidemiologist from the University of Indonesia.

The protective equipment for the Indonesian medical team has also been criticized. Many health staff lack adequate protection. This was conveyed directly by a doctor who said how he had to wear a raincoat because there were no medical gowns available.

"My friends, one by one, caught the virus," he said, holding back tears.

The latest development related to this, the Indonesian government stated that it is ready to supply 175 thousand sets of new protective equipment for medical staff to be distributed throughout the country. In addition, an emergency hospital was opened in the Wisma Atlet Building and can accommodate up to 24 thousand patients. Others, doctors and medical staff have been promised bonuses, and 500 thousand rapid test kits have arrived from China.

Another criticism is on the decentralization of the health system in Indonesia. Decentralization has made it extremely difficult for the central government to coordinate the response in this archipelago nation which has an area of about 19 thousand islands spanning 5,100 kilometers.

The lack of intensive care unit (ICU) beds also worries experts. This is because Indonesia is not only facing COVID-19 but also dengue fever (DBD).

"If you are very sick and you can go to the ICU and put on a ventilator, most people should survive," said Archie Clements, a public health specialist at Perth's Curtin University, referring to the COVID-19 patient.

"If you don't take them to the ICU and aren't on a ventilator, they're going to die," Clements added.

A study in the journal Critical Care Medicine compared intensive care places for adults in Asian countries using 2017 data. As a result, Indonesia is known to have 2.7 critical care places per 100,000 people, the lowest in Asia.