The Story:
The Red Cross is warning of an onrushing pandemic emergency in southeast Asia’s largest country, Indonesia, as the need for ventilators becomes so great that suppliers warn they are running out of oxygen.
Significance:
Hospitals in the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta, are turning patients away. Accordingly, families are trying to care for their Covid sick kin at home, which in turn means that those families are working to secure their own respirators and oxygen supply. The price for a tank of the precious element, usually $50 in Indonesia, has risen to $140.
A separate, though related, issue is the transportation of the stuff. Having enough full gas tanks at point A helps no one if the patients are at point B and there is no quick way to get them there. Sulung Mulia Putra, an official at Jakarta’s health agency, told Reuters that the reason hospitals were reporting shortages was a lack of transport.
In Pill Form:
The above report sounds like it might have been written of any of several world cities during the worst of the pandemic, in December of last year or January of this. But it is true of Indonesia, in June – July 2021, precisely because the more contagious “Delta” variant has taken hold. Everything old is new again.
