Indonesia: “We should just dig many, many graves”

Reuters reports that Indonesia is struggling to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Excerpt:

Only last week Luhut Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s maritime minister and close confidant of the country’s president, touted herbal mangosteen juice as a coronavirus remedy.

His suggestion was the latest in a string of unorthodox treatments put forward by the president’s cabinet over the past six months, ranging from prayer to rice wrapped in banana-leaf to eucalyptus necklaces.

The remedies reflect the unscientific approach to battling the coronavirus in the world’s fourth-most populous country, where the rate of testing is among the world’s lowest, contact tracing is minimal, and authorities have resisted lockdowns even as infections spiked.

Indonesia's total confirmed cases of COVID-19 is 144,945, while the death toll is 6,346. These figures are well below the likes of the US, Brazil and India where the numbers of confirmed cases run in the millions.

And yet, these figures may be misleading. According to Reuters, the true scale of Indonesia’s outbreak may still be hidden because of its low test rate, with the country ranking 83rd out of 86 countries surveyed for overall tests per capita.

“This virus has already spread all over Indonesia. What we are doing is basically herd immunity,” said Prijo Sidipratomo, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the National Veterans Development University in Jakarta. “So, we should just dig many, many graves.”