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Death rate in Jakarta near pre-pandemic level as outbreak eases
Jakarta recorded 16,122 deaths, more than five times the pre-pandemic death rate, when Delta hit the city in July.
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Cemetery workers place a coffin into a grave in Pondok Ranggon public cemetery in East Jakarta on Oct. 5, the day the cemetery officially started using the newly expanded burial area for COVID-19 patients. JP/P.J. Leo (JP/P.J. Leo)
T
he monthly number of burials in Jakarta is almost back to pre-pandemic levels as the Delta-fueled infection surge eases in the capital, once the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
Jakarta recorded 3,199 burials in September — close to the average of 2,800 burials per month from 2017 to 2019 — with 299 deaths confirmed as being caused by COVID-19. The September figure is far below that of July, the peak of the Delta-fueled second wave, when the city recorded 16,122 burials, more than five times the pre-pandemic death rate.
The excess deaths have fallen from 13,322 in July (many of whom could be those with non-COVID-19 diseases who failed to get medication when the city’s hospitals were overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients) to 1,841 in August and 399 in September.
“It's basically sloping down for the first time, although it has not fully returned [as it was before the pandemic]," Septian Hartono, a medical scientist and data coordinator of grassroots pandemic watchdog KawalCOVID-19 who analyzes the data, told The Jakarta Post last week.
Amid the persistent problem of underreporting of COVID-19 in the country, the number of burials has been used as an indicator of the real pandemic situation. Jakarta, according to Septian, was one the few regions that provided reliable data on burials.
A December study by the Eijkman-Oxford Clinical Research Unit found that the number of burials in Jakarta was 61 percent higher in the first 10 months of 2020. The study noted that “burial records indicated substantially increased mortality associated with the onset of and ongoing COVID-19 epidemic in Jakarta”, Reuters reported.
Read also: Government eases restrictions in Greater Jakarta
