Stricter restrictions were essential especially ahead of the year-end holiday season that could potentially lead to a spike in new cases, Ari Fahrial Syam, dean of the University of Indonesia’s (UI) School of Medicine said.

"All regional leaders should ban New Year’s Eve celebrations and impose night curfews to curb COVID-19 transmission," Ari said as reported by kompas.id on Sunday.

Ari highlighted the recent spike in the COVID-19 positivity rate amid the low testing conducted by the government.

The positivity rate in the past week was recorded at 21.5 percent with 6,528 out of 29,425 people tested for the coronavirus confirmed to have contracted the disease, meaning one out of five people's test results came back positive.

The number of active cases was recorded at 108,452 cases as per Sunday while the number of suspects nationwide was 69,325 people.

The huge number of suspects compared with the number of people tested indicated a low level of testing conducted by the government.

Ari said the increasing number of active cases had overwhelmed COVID-19 hospitals across the country.

"It's very hard to refer patients nowadays as a lot of COVID-19 isolation rooms and ICUs [intensive care units] are fully occupied. The medicine supply has also thinned out and a lot of health workers have been infected and died because of COVID-19," he said.

Tri Maharani, an emergency doctor with Indonesian volunteer group Lapor COVID-19, corroborated Ari's statement.

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"It's getting difficult to refer patients [to hospitals] in Java. Several hospitals in Blitar and Nganjuk regency in East Java have even set up tents to accommodate patients. However, the number of health workers, especially nurses, is limited at the moment," Tri said.

As healthcare workers were overwhelmed by the surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations, the mortality risk for COVID-19 patients treated in the ICUs had also increased as a result of delays in receiving intensive care.

"Not only health workers, mortuary personnel are also overwhelmed as the death toll continues rising," Tri said.

On Monday, the Health Ministry announced 215 more COVID-19 deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities nationwide to 21,452 people out of 719,219 recorded cases.

Last week, Indonesia recorded the highest one-day death toll since the pandemic hit the country in March with 258 fatalities.

Based on the data collected by Lapor COVID-19 from regional administrations across the country, however, the number of deaths was recorded at 24,945 people while the number of deaths among probable cases was 24,917 people.

Tri said the number of health workers who died of COVID-19 infections had also risen.

"Four health workers passed away on Sunday bringing the total number of fatalities to 499 people, comprising 227 doctors, 158 nurses, 69 midwives and others," she said.

"Unless the government sets up measures to curb COVID-19 transmission, the hospitals will never be able to accommodate the spike in patients, even though we continue to add more isolation rooms and ICUs," Tri added. (nal)

Editor’s note: This article is part of a public campaign by the COVID-19 task force to raise people’s awareness about the pandemic.