DElementary school teacher Susie Johannes no longer remembers how she was admitted. When her husband and a friend took her to a hospital in western Jakarta on a motorcycle, she had lost consciousness. “I found it difficult to breathe. My chest felt heavy, as if someone had put a stone on it,” the 52-year-old Covid-19 patient reported to FAZ from the hospital.
Her family had previously tried to prepare a bed for her in several hospitals in Jakarta, but to no avail. Soon after receiving a positive test result in mid-June, she was admitted once but was subsequently released. A few days later, her condition worsened and the oxygen content in her blood dropped to a dangerously low level. “I have never experienced such a disease,” said the Indonesian, who not only suffers from lung pain, but also fever and headache.
Corona nightmare is like in India
In the end, she was lucky because she knew someone who worked at Cengkareng State Hospital and could accommodate her there. However, the conditions there are shocking. Emergency tents for COVID-19 patients have been set up in the parking lot in front of the hospital. In the beginning, the woman and about 20 other patients lay in the hospital corridor, which the doctors converted into an intensive care unit. “It was chaotic. The patient howled in pain,” the Indonesian reported. The corridor also leads directly to the hospital morgue, so she has to watch the paramedics bring the newly deceased there almost every hour. A few days later, she and five other patients were transferred to the ward. It was much better there and her condition stabilized.
What Susi Johannes reported is now happening to many people in Indonesia. This country of 270 million people is currently experiencing a corona nightmare similar to the one that hit India a few weeks ago. On Tuesday, the daily number of new infections reached a high of 31,189. In May, only 6,000 cases were detected every day. Same as India, coronavirus This led to a rapid increase in the number of cases. According to the government, 90% of infections in Jakarta are suspected of being infected with the virus. In the capital, the number of funerals held under Covid-19 measures has increased tenfold since the beginning of May. People died in parking lots, cars and homes because there was no hospital to accept them.
Although India’s numbers continue to decline, Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is particularly in disaster. The newspaper predicted that the health system would collapse. Ambulance sirens sounded on the streets of big cities that were half-empty due to the tightening of coronavirus measures. A few days ago, an online video showed the body of a man lying in front of his house in a poor area in northern Jakarta for twelve hours. It was later proved that he tested positive for the coronavirus two weeks ago. According to the police, it was because the authorities were overworked and failed to remove the body early.
