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Two years on, Athletes Village still Jakarta’s go-to isolation center
As one of the main facilities for treating COVID-19 in the capital city, the Athletes Village apartment compound has witnessed the ups and downs of the pandemic over the last two years.
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COVID-19 patients take an aerobics class together on the grounds of the Athletes Village isolation facility in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, in February. Patients are permitted to exercise together in the open field every afternoon if the weather permits. (JP/A. Muh. Ibnu Aqil)
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efore COVID-19 swept into Indonesia nearly two years ago, few would have imagined that the 10-hectare Athletes Village compound in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, would become one of the city’s most prominent healthcare facilities.
After housing athletes for the 2018 Asian Games and Asian Para Games, the 10 apartment towers remained mostly empty, waiting for the next big event to attract sports professionals from around the world.
With a capacity exceeding the International Olympic Committee’s standard of housing for 14,000 athletes, the facility was expected to bolster Indonesia’s efforts to host the Olympic Games.
Instead, the towers have borne witness to the country’s massive COVID-19 outbreak, from the initial wave of infections in 2020, to the deadly second wave fueled by the Delta variant, right up to the ongoing Omicron wave.
After President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced the country’s first two confirmed COVID-19 cases on March 2, 2020, health workers began preparing the 7,000 empty units to house patients.
By the time Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati had moved to reallocate Rp 62.3 trillion (US$3.9 billion) in state funds toward the COVID-19 response, including to refit the Athletes Village as a medical center, Indonesia had reported 369 cases and 32 deaths.
Nowadays, as the government cautiously acknowledges the relative mildness of the Omicron strain of the coronavirus, the emergency hospital is mostly being used as an isolation center for patients with asymptomatic or mild cases, as well as for people unable to quarantine at home.
