Like India, Indonesia battles oxygen shortage amid spike in COVID cases

Indonesia is currently battling a shortage of oxygen as COVID-19 cases are on the rise across the country.

India faced a similar challenge earlier in the year, running out of oxygen for COVID patients and recording over 400,000 cases in one day.

The high demand for oxygen in Indonesia has also led to the scarcity of new cylinders and accessibility to refills.

The health ministry said it had asked the gas industry to step up the production of medical oxygen and appealed to people not to hoard the oxygen.

About 63 COVID-19 patients in the country reportedly died over the weekend at the Dr. Sardjito General Hospital in Yogyakarta area of Indonesia when the hospital ran out of its central supply of oxygen.

“The hospital switched to oxygen cylinders, including the 100 cylinders donated by the Yogyakarta regional police. However, all efforts were too late,” Rukmono Siswishanto, the hospital director, had said in a statement on Sunday.

The country is currently recording more than 25,000 new cases every day with the crisis attributed to the Delta variant spreading through the nation and increased travel.

Experts warn that the overall numbers are likely to be much higher because of inadequate testing outside Jakarta, the country’s capital.

Owing to the daily surges in cases, hospitals have resorted to building makeshift intensive care units and dedicating new quarantine centres while some hospitals have had to turn away patients.

In order to curb the spread of infection, President Joko Widodo announced a lockdown on the country’s main island Java, and on Bali, a tourist island.

The lockdown will last two weeks and it is aimed at reducing the number of cases to below 10,000 a day.

Indonesia has also recorded a high number of infections and deaths among its medical frontline workers.

Adib Khumaidi, head of the Indonesian Medical Association, had earlier said at least 949 medical workers in the country died of COVID-19 between March 2020 and June 2021.

“The extraordinary surge in the number of patients in hospitals has increased the working hours of medical workers and doubled their risks of being exposed to the coronavirus,” Khumaidi said.

According to him, in May 2021, seven doctors died from COVID-19 but the number rose to 24 in June 2021.

The country has recorded 2,284,084 COVID-19 cases and 60,582 deaths so far.