The governor of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, said on Tuesday nearly 300 suspected and confirmed victims of the Chinese coronavirus had been buried since the start of March.
Indonesia’s president has refused to quarantine Jakarta, despite the governor’s calls for a lockdown. The call for action has fueled fears that Indonesia’s death toll is higher than the official figure of 157.
Nearly 300 suspected and confirmed coronavirus victims have been buried in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, since the beginning of March, Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan said in a press conference on Monday. Given the discrepancy between the official national numbers and Jakarta’s, most of the capital’s cases appear to be only suspected.
Between March 6 and March 29, 283 people in Jakarta had been buried, although not all had been tested for the coronavirus, the governor added. Anies said that the high number of burials within one month “shows that the situation in Jakarta is very concerning.”
Anies said he had formally proposed placing the capital under quarantine and prohibiting all nonessential activities, but the central government denied his proposal. He says he continues to abide by the central government’s decision not to quarantine the capital.
“For two weeks, Jakarta has closed schools, workplaces and places of worship and other public centers, but we have limited authority to enforce this. That is why we hoped there would be legal restrictions,” Anies said.
The capital has become the region hardest-hit by the Chinese coronavirus in Indonesia, with the highest number of suspected cases. Jakarta Governor Anies has been pressuring the president to place the capital on lockdown, to no avail.
On Monday, President Joko Widodo said the central government would pursue a policy of “large-scale social restrictions” and stricter physical distancing measures, instead of enacting more restrictive quarantines.
President Jokowi has resisted the idea of imposing lockdowns in the country, claiming it would be unsuitable for Indonesian society. In response, provincial administrations have enforced quarantine measures in their communities independently. These measures cannot be officially categorized as a “lockdown” or “quarantine,” because the power to impose such measures rests solely with Indonesia’s central government.
On Tuesday, reports indicated that the number of Indonesian fatalities due to Chinese coronavirus could exceed 1 million unless a lockdown is immediately declared.
Indonesia has been suspected of hiding its true number of coronavirus cases for months. On March 3, President Jokowi announced the country’s first two official cases of the coronavirus. Prior to this acknowledgment, the Indonesian government had repeatedly denied claims that the Chinese coronavirus had reached the nation of 200 million people, leading to confusion over the country’s true number of cases. Indonesia has the highest coronavirus mortality rate in Southeast Asia.
At press time on Wednesday, Indonesia had reported 1,677 infections and 157 deaths from the Chinese coronavirus.