FRONTRUNNER

The recent surge in COVID-19 cases has thrown the country into yet another crisis. From around 6,000 new cases a day during May 2021, cases rose dramatically in the following weeks reaching over 20,000 a day by the end of June, forcing the government to impose another lockdown from early July.

- Dennis A. Pratama

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Despite these measures, new cases continued to rise through to mid-July, reaching around 50,000 per day at the peak, and with the high number of cases with severe symptoms, there was extreme pressure on the healthcare system. One area of critical shortage was in the availability of oxygen supply as demand from hospitals and other healthcare facilities increased six-fold, far exceeding the capacity of suppliers in the short term. This temporary shortage in the supply of oxygen to hospitals led to a spike in the death rates as the country grappled with a crisis which has seen over 3.5 million positive cases and over 100,000 deaths by early August.

In sharing the scale of the pressures this spike in cases caused in the demand for oxygen, The Ministry of Health reported that daily oxygen demand had increased during this period from around 400 tonnes to 2,500 tonnes at the peak; a total far exceeding Indonesia's daily production capacity of around 1,700 tonnes. As a result, the Ministry of Industry intends to implement measures to increase daily production capacity to 2,600 tonnes in anticipation of further increases in covid cases. The dire situation has seen the government and businesses, both domestic and international, work quickly to provide additional supplies in order to close the gap in supplies in the short term. Here are some of the initiatives which have been taken to date.

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