There is no way to sugarcoat this. The situation is dire, and we cannot help but ask ourselves: How did we get here – again?

For the first time in months, the daily case number was back in the ten thousands on Thursday, with the national COVID-19 task force reporting 12,624 cases that day. About a third of them were recorded in Jakarta. The capital recorded 4,144 cases that day, the second highest number reported since the pandemic began last year. It was a massive increase from 519 daily cases on June 1 and 2,091 on June 10. On Friday, the national daily case count rose to 12,990, with Jakarta contributing 4,737 cases.

While those figures may not reflect the real number of people with the disease in the country, they mirror what epidemiologists and government officials themselves have warned about over the past two months: a looming resurgence in cases. In other words, we saw this coming. Yet we let it hit us with little effort to dodge it.  

The bed occupancy rate at the Wisma Atlet COVID-19 hospital has exceeded 75 percent, and several referral hospitals in Jakarta, West Java, Central Java and East Java have reported increases in the bed occupancy rate to between 50 and 90 percent. Fears are mounting that regional healthcare systems will collapse. 

 

Warning signs ignored