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JAKARTA / SINGAPORE: Indonesia’s enforcement of its ban on the annual Hari Raya Aidilfitri exodus takes on additional importance, as several Covid-19 broadcasts have been linked to those who traveled home before.
A poll cited by the government said 7 percent of people had gone home early, before the ban.
The cases include a 72-year-old grandfather in Klaten, Central Java, who contracted the coronavirus from his grandson who returned from Jakarta in the middle of last month, according to media reports.
Late last month, a man who showed symptoms of Covid-19 died in Cilacap, Central Java. Local authorities said he had no history of travel to any red light areas, where there are many infections, but his younger brother had returned with seven others from Jakarta, all of whom tested positive.
In the same month, a two-year-old baby in Garut, West Java, contracted the virus from his father, another returnee from Jakarta.
Indonesians have been caught trying to sneak home by hiding in truck containers and trunks despite the national mudik ban, or the annual exodus back to home cities for Hari Raya Idul Fitri, which is celebrated on the 23rd and 24th. May this year. This is so despite the fact that criminals are subject to fines of up to Rs 100 million (S $ 9,450) and up to one year in prison.
The mudik ban, which went into effect on April 24, aims to curb the spread of the virus from Jakarta, the epicenter of the outbreak and other high-risk regions to the rest of the vast archipelago.
But just days after it was announced, police caught a couple hiding under boxes of fish biscuits in a truck on their way to Bengkulu in Sumatra. They were detained in Banten province, half way from their starting point in Semarang, Central Java.
In another case, a ruse from a family of five had to hide in a minivan, which had allegedly stalled, and get a truck to transport it to a service station. The Jakarta family was shooting for Central Java.
Last year, 7.2 million people made their way from Greater Jakarta to their hometowns in the western, central and eastern parts of Java and Sumatra the week before Idul Fitri, making this the most widely traveled route. busy. Around 19.5 million people made the trip home last year across the country.
The mudik ban came after an appeal for people to stay was not widely accepted enough; According to the survey cited by the government, 24 percent of people still wanted to go home in the middle of the outbreak.
The fear is that more cases on the island of Java may overload health facilities in less developed regions.
The government has increased capacity by opening a 1,800-bed Covid-19 emergency hospital in late March, in addition to the 3,249 beds and 1,083 isolation rooms, which can hold up to four people each, in hospitals in Java.
But this is unlikely to be enough in Java, where 150 million of the country’s 270 million inhabitants reside.
“Java’s hospital infrastructure is the highest in terms of the number of beds and doctors. But if the outbreak worsens, given the size of the population, the infrastructure is not enough,” economist Chatib Basri said in a recent conference call with investors.
Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation in the world, recorded 533 new cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, totaling 13,645.
It also saw 16 other deaths, bringing the total number of victims to 959, the highest in Southeast Asia. – The Straits Times / Asian News
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