YAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia reported on Monday that its total number of coronavirus cases had exceeded 100,000, while the president suggested officials who are leading the epidemic to an “aura of crisis” in a country with the highest of infections and deaths in East Asia.
On Monday, the Ministry of Health reported 1,525 new cases and deaths, bringing the total number of infections and deaths to 100,303 and 4,838, respectively.
The new milestone comes a week after President Joko Widodo reorganized Indonesia’s COVID-19 committee to also deal with economic recovery and fitness management.
“(We) we cannot let him go. This aura of fitness crisis will have to be transmitted until a vaccine is given and can be used effectively,” Widodo said at a meeting with committee members on Monday.
Indonesia’s state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma and China’s Sinovac have a vaccine partnership and will conduct third-phase clinical testing in the country next month.
Unlike some neighbouring countries, Indonesia was never completely locked up after Widodo warned it would harm millions of deficient people, some regions brought restrictions.
As a component of the opening of the economy, the island of Bali, the main gateway for tourists, plans to allow foreign visitors to return from 9/11.
Laura Navika Yamani, an epidemiologist at Airlangga University, said Indonesia doesn’t open without getting better testing and tracking.
“So now that we’ve fallen into the ‘new normality’, interactions between other people are inevitable, so the threat of transmission will be present and widened,” he said.
The scope of the tests is small for a country of approximately 270 million people, of whom 807,946 were tested on Monday.
President Widodo said this month that the coronavirus outbreak in Indonesia is expected to peak until August or September.
Muhammad Wildan, 25, a civil servant, is concerned about the rising caseload, but said he had to work.
“I’m so scared, what can you do? You have to make a living,” Wildan said, speaking on a central street in Jakarta.
Reporting through Yuddy Cahya Budiman, Maikel Jefriando and Stanley Widianto; Edited through Ed Davies
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