Indonesia battles oxygen scarcity as Covid-19 cases spike
Jakarta, July 5 (EFE).- The medical system in Indonesia is on the brink of collapse amid a shortage of medical oxygen in some hospitals and a rising daily number of Covid-19 infections.
The world’s fourth most populous country added more than 27,000 coronavirus patients and 555 deaths Sunday, even as the government imposed new emergency measures to curb the exponential spike in infections that has overwhelmed the healthcare infrastructure.
The new measures, which took effect in the islands of Java and Bali, will be in force until July 20.
The government has ordered the closure of schools, parks, shopping venues, and bars.
It has imposed travel curbs to stop the outbreak.
Some hospitals are battling scarcity of medical oxygen supply amid a daily spike in the number of Covid-19 patients since the beginning of June.
A hospital in Bandung on the Java island said Sunday that it would not admit more patients with respiratory problems because oy was running short of life-saving gas.
The RS Al-Islam hospital noted, in an Instagram post, that it would review the decision on Wednesday.
The oxygen shortage began last week.
The problem is in the overcrowded island of Java, where more than 50 percent of the country’s 270 million people live.
During the weekend, 63 patients with Covid-19 lost their lives when they ran out of media oxygen at the Sardjito Hospital in Yogyakarta in the central region of the Java island.
Indonesia had, as of Monday, fully inoculated just 5 percent of its population.
The majority of them have received the Chinese vaccine developed by Sinovac.
Front-line workers in the fight against Covid-19 and other fully inoculated people have allegedly contracted the infection despite receiving the two jabs of the Chinese vaccine weeks ago. EFE
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