In July, the Indonesian capital of Jakarta became the Southeast Asian epicenter of the pandemic.
These are the three key issues that could make Indonesia vulnerable if there's another wave. 👇
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Hendro Utomo, 53, would listen as the loudspeakers from the local mosque announced who had died the day before.
"Five, eight dead every day, just in my neighborhood," he said.
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Emergency doctors like Debryna Dewi, 29, had to regularly decide which patients would receive a hospital and which were sent home.
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Around 23% of the country's population has been vaccinated — but data analysts are urging caution, concerned that Indonesia isn't collecting enough COVID-19 data to know if it should reopen.
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It's no secret — Indonesia said it doesn't count COVID-19 deaths if the victim had other pre-existing conditions or if they weren't tested.
This runs contrary to @WHO guidelines.
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Local governments are in charge of sending COVID-19 data to the authorities — and not all local COVID-19 deaths were added to the national count, said Elina Ciptadi, co-founder of @KawalCOVID19.
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.@LaporCovid, an independent watchdog organization, says the death toll was up to six times worse at one point, according to its observations of villages across the country.
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The problem, the experts said, is both because testing is too limited, and because people do not want to admit when they are sick.
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When Dewi, the emergency doctor, saw that Jakarta was on the mend, she decided to move to the poorer island of Flores, 1,000 miles east of Jakarta, to work at hospitals there.
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43% percent of Indonesia's population lives in rural areas.
Many doctors in these areas travel to patients' houses, Dewi said — meaning that patient treatment in a pandemic can be complicated.
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Without local vaccine production, Indonesia also has to wait for shots.
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Once Indonesia has the vaccines, they are rolled out across the country.
But as Indonesia is an archipelago, it can't just drive vaccines to the islands — it has to ferry them via plane or sea.
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Rural provinces still have vaccination rates below 10%, while tourist areas like Bali have 58%.
This shows a worrying sign of vaccine inequity, said @DiahSaminarsih, founder of @CISDI_ID.
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Read more about the three issues that have led to Indonesia's Summer of Death on Insider.
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