Coronavirus cases are taking off in Indonesia.

 Date; 3/3/21

Source: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/ Jan. 15, 2021

Summary: The graph in Indonesia ids reported to be low nowadays.



Coverage: Another face in charge of Indonesia's Service of Wellbeing has raised researchers' expectations that

 the nation may adopt a more logical strategy to its inexorably frantic battle with Coronavirus. 

In a 22 December 2020 bureau reshuffle, Indonesian President Joko Widodo named Budi Gunadi

 Sadikin, who has a degree in atomic physical science, as wellbeing pastor. He took over from Terawan Agus Putranto, 

a military specialist known for pushing a disputable, dubious stroke treatment he had created

 himself. His slow, clandestine administration of the pandemic was generally seen as a disappointment. 


Sadikin, who has dealt with the pandemic since Walk 2020 at the Service of State Claimed Undertakings, 

"appears to comprehend the issue well indeed," Zubairi Djoerban, top of the Indonesian Clinical Affiliation's Coronavirus team, 

composed on Twitter subsequent to meeting Sadikin on 11 January. 

Indonesia slacks in testing and information assortment, 

and countenances the colossal undertaking of immunizing its remote of 270 million individuals. "Ideally, a science-based 

methodology will enlighten our direction," tweeted Ines Atmosukarto, an Indonesian atomic scholar who coordinates Lipotek, 

a biotech startup in Canberra, Australia.

Indonesia's true pandemic cost is moderately low: 

he Coronavirus team has announced just 850,000 cases and 25,000 passings, a loss of life for each capita that is short of what

 one-10th of that in the US. However, the circumstance on the ground recounts an alternate story. Emergency clinics on Java, 

the country's most crowded island, are near the precarious edge of breakdown;

 some treat patients in seats in the passages rather than beds. Families drive from one medical clinic to another with patients,

 attempting to discover one that will acknowledge them. Diseases are "uncontrolled," says disease transmission specialist 

Henry Surendra of the Eijkman-Oxford Clinical Exploration Unit.

 (Surendra says he is talking in an individual limit, not for the exploration unit.) 


The disparity stems partially from Indonesia's low test rates. The nation as of now performs about 0.12 tests per 1000 individuals each day, 

versus 3.9 in the US and 8.1 in the Assembled Realm, as per Our Reality in Information. A few locales have deliberately kept the quantity of 

tests low to try not to feature their disease rates, 

says Septian Hartono, a clinical physicist at the Duke-NUS Clinical School 

in Singapore and a volunteer at KawalCOVID19, a cooperative stage that breaks down Indonesian Covid information freely.

Hartono has also found many discrepancies between the data reported by the provincial and national governments. On 10 January, for example, the national government reported 58% fewer deaths than the total reported by Indonesia’s provinces. Meanwhile, detailed demographic and clinical information about patients has been impossible to obtain from the Ministry of Health, Surendra says. “Without the right data, it’s very difficult for the government to produce the right policy,” Hartono says.

Hartono thinks Sadikin “really wants to fix this, but he is still in firefighting mode,” trying to bring down a surge in cases. Sadikin took over at the start of the holidays, when local and international tourists were flocking to Bali and mobility on Java was quite high. Sadikin imposed stricter lockdowns in both islands and issued a travel ban for foreigners effective 1 January. But daily infections have gone up by 30% to 40%, according to Ministry of Health data. Sadikin has asked hospitals to increase the number of beds for COVID-19 patients and enabled 10,000 unemployed nurses to work in hospitals temporarily.

One of Sadikin’s top priorities will be vaccination. On 11 January, the Indonesian Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) issued an emergency use authorization for CoronaVac, produced by Chinese manufacturer Sinovac Biotech; 2 days later Widodo rolled up his sleeve for his first dose. Indonesia was the first country outside China to approve CoronaVac, and the decision is based on preliminary data.

A phase III trial in the city of Bandung, in West Java, showed the vaccine had 65.3% efficacy, according to BPOM—much lower than the rates of more than 90% seen in messenger RNA vaccines made by Western companies, but well above the 50% threshold the World Health Organization has recommended for widespread use of a vaccine. With only 1600 participants, the trial was much smaller than most, however, and it recorded just 25 infections. Researchers in Turkey in December reported that CoronaVac has 91.5% efficacy, based on another relatively small trial. One week ago, a team running a much larger study in Brazil announced an efficacy of 78%, but on Wednesday they said that based on stricter criteria, the efficacy was just 50%.

CoronaVac has cleared another important hurdle: On 11 January, the Indonesian Ulema Council issued a fatwa declaring the vaccine halal, or permissible under Islamic law. Many vaccines contain pork gelatin as a stabilizer, and in 2018, a new measles-rubella vaccine was declared haram, or forbidden, in Indonesia for that reason. It’s not clear whether CoronaVac contains elements of porcine origin as well, but Muslim scholars have decided the shots are halal in any case because the pandemic is an emergency. Sadikin has asked religious leaders in Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s two biggest Islamic organizations, for support for the new vaccine, and both have since said it is an obligation for every Muslim to get vaccinated.

Indonesia has ordered 125 million doses of CoronaVac. So far, 1.2 million have been distributed; another 15 million doses have arrived in Jakarta in bulk, to be processed by Bio Farma, Indonesia’s only vaccine manufacturing company. Sadikin says he has secured another 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, a global mechanism to distribute vaccines equitably.

Detecting the spread of mutant variants of SARS-CoV-2 like one that emerged in the United Kingdom is another priority for Sadikin. Only 194 full viral genomes from the country have been posted in GISAID, an international virus genome database, suggesting more transmissible or dangerous variants could easily go unnoticed. On 9 January, Sadikin signed a memorandum of understanding with Bambang Brodjonegoro, minister of research and technology, aimed at increasing those numbers and strengthening collaboration between Indonesian universities. “I realize that we need to build a defense system against this virus,” Sadikin said at a press conference.


By: Dyna Rochmyaningsih 

Posted in: Asia/Pacific Health Corona Virus

doi:10.1126/science.abg6015


Note: The contents may be altered or moffied to avoid repetitions.

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