Hi folks, we’d love to be able to say that things are improving but that is not what’s happening. In fact, it’s getting worse by the day. We keep breaking records of new cases and deaths, our active cases are going up, and the government keeps falling over themselves trying to figure out what to do because nothing is working. Nothing. On the flip side, the people are also tired of the prolonged restrictions, tired of losing relatives, colleagues, and friends, tired of losing jobs, tired of having to wait for the vaccines because the rollout is just not happening evenly and fairly. There’s too many stories of people wanting to be vaccinated but prevented by ridiculous and inflexible bureaucrazies. So what’s happened this past week? Read on.
Where We At Right Now
The second wave continues to rage nationwide. This week alone, Indonesia recorded 243,119 confirmed cases while 5,882 people died because of COVID-19. Number of new cases peaked at 38,391 on Thursday (July 8) and appeared to be declining for the following three days.
The pandemic appears to be hitting Jakarta the hardest. Except for July 6 and 7, Jakarta recorded more than 10,000 confirmed cases each day, peaking on Sunday (July 11) at 13,133. However, between Friday and Sunday, Jakarta had more recoveries than new cases, causing active cases in the capital to drop by 2,048 on Friday, 4,009 on Saturday and 7,523 on Sunday. Hopefully, this means that at least in Jakarta, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
The same cannot be said for the rest of the nation though. If we exclude Jakarta, Indonesia would have only recorded 12,013 recoveries instead of 32,615 on Sunday while active cases would have risen by 10,098 instead of 2,575.
With cases spiking in almost every province across Indonesia, the government has expanded the PPKM Emergency policy to include 15 cities: North Sumatra’s Medan; Riau Island’s Tanjung Pinang and Batam; West Sumatra’s Padang, Padang Panjang and Bukit Tinggi; Lampung’s Bandar Lampung; East Kalimantan’s Balikpapan, Bontang and Berau Regency; West Kalimantan’s Pontianak and Singkawang; West Papua’s Manokwari and Sorong and West Nusa Tenggara’s Mataram.
Not much has improved, test-wise. At the beginning of Emergency PPKM on July 3, we tested a total of 110,983 people over a 24-hour period. The best we’ve done so far is to increase this to 145,294 which happened on July 10. We are still far away from the target of testing at least 324.283 people a day during this period.
About 20-30% of those tested were from Jakarta even though the capital only represents about 3% of the country’s population. Even so, test rate in the capital is not exactly great. For the past one week, positive rate in Jakarta hovered between 38.4% to 48.4%.
In fact, a recent study suggests that 44.5% of Jakarta’s population might have already been infected before March 31. That’s 4.7 million people, almost twice the NATIONAL total today.
Moderna is Here
The government announced on Friday that 1.47 million health workers working on the front line will get a third booster shot using Moderna vaccines. Three million out of four million doses pledged by The United States for Indonesia arrived on Sunday.
The government decided that the booster shot would be required for the health workers because this Delta wave is taking a big toll on the health workers. Dozens have died since June and many more infected even though they have been fully vaccinated with CoronaVac.
Health Minister Budi Gunawan Sadikin said on July 1 that Indonesia was getting four million doses of Moderna vaccine very soon. The shipment that we got on Sunday, July 11, was actually 3,060,000, which means that there will be a second shipment of about one million doses. However, nobody expected that Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi would announce that we would actually be getting 4.5 million doses instead. 4,500,160 doses to be exact. She said it twice during the Moderna arrival press conference and BGS repeated it.
So sometime between July 1 and 11 they must have managed to negotiate an extra half a million doses of Moderna. Nice work, Bu Retno and Pak BGS! On top of that, during the same press conference, BGS said that the Moderna vaccines will also go to the public as a two shot package, so not just for health workers. Some lucky people out there will get these pretty soon. Who’ll it be?
The Moderna vaccines, the first mRNA vaccine to arrive in Indonesia, were delivered via the COVAX initiative. Many are trying to get their hands on the coveted vaccine and the government still hasn’t disclosed how the rest of the supply would be distributed beyond health workers. Some have speculated that they could be sold alongside Sinopharm in the individual purchase program but not only would that be illegal, it would violate the COVAX agreement and could put us in the initiative’s black list.
The Government Wants to Sell Covid-19 Vaccines
With the pandemic raging, people have been rushing to get themselves vaccinated causing long queues which snaked for kilometers at some vaccination centres. Some centers got so crowded, people are worried about the possibility of vax center clusters.
Instead of establishing more vax centers, the government had the bright idea of allowing individuals to participate in the so called “Gotong Royong” independent vaccination scheme. In other words you’ll be able to buy your own Sinopharm vaccine shots at select Kimia Farma pharmacies in Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, Solo, and Bali. They cost Rp643,320 for two vials and Rp235,820 admin fee for the two jabs for a total of Rp879,140.
The vaccines were set for sale starting on Monday, July 12, but public pressure and outrage have forced the participating pharmacies to push it back until further notice. The company claimed that significant public interest have forced the company to extend the advocacy period so they can offer a better service to the public. Sure, Jan.
While both the Gotong Royong and paid individual schemes use Sinopharm, the same brand is actually being used in the free scheme as well due to an update of the ministerial decree from the Health Ministry earlier this month.
Sinopharm was initially meant only for the Gotong Royong corporate scheme which companies had to pay for but the UAE sent us half a million doses in May so the government changed the law to allow both the free and Gotong Royong programs to use the same brands provided that the government received them as a donation. Curiously UAE’s Sinopharm vaccines don’t seem to have been distributed as part of the free program over two months later. Hmmmm …
The government has pledged that the Gotong Royong scheme will not affect supply for the free program. The same government has also pledged that people will be vaccinated for free... and yet here we are… Besides, the company given permission to run this scheme is actually the parent company of Kimia Farma Diagnostika whose employees in Medan ran a COVID test scam with reused swabs from December 2020 to April this year and whose board of directors were fired in May for it.
Experts and activists are calling for the paid vaccine program to be cancelled, calling the plan unethical by taking advantage of people’s desperation during a crisis. The deputy of DPR’s Health and Labor Commission said the Commission will summon the Health Minister and Kimia Farma for allowing and running the paid vaccine program for individuals against the word of the president at the beginning of the year.
Quick Reads
We’re not doing anywhere near good enough job in stopping Covid-19 from spreading around the country so the world decided we shouldn’t be traveling overseas. Hong Kong, Singapore, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan have restricted travelers from Indonesia from visiting or transiting through their countries. Some of them are international hubs, so …
Special Hospital for Legislators
PAN politician Rosaline Rumaseuw said the government must establish a dedicated hospital for public officials who have contracted Covid-19. "Public officials must get special treatment," she said, because "they are appointed to think about the country and its people." Well, rightfully so her statement was disavowed by her own party.
District Chief Dismissed for Hosting a Party
The chief of Pancoran Mas sub district in Depok has been dismissed for staging a wedding ceremony where people are seen dancing without health protocol on Saturday, the very same day PPKM Emergency began. He is facing max of 1 yr in prison and/or Rp 1m fine.
Tightening of PCR Lab Requirements
Starting July 12, only PCR and antigen test results issued by one of 742 labs recognized the Ministry of Health are valid for air travel, Health Minister BGS said. The new rule already applies for JKT-DPS and DPS-JKT flights. Check if your lab is registered here.