Indonesia short on oxygen, seeks help as virus cases soar
Jakarta: Just two months ago, Indonesia was coming to a gasping India's aid with thousands tanks of oxygen.
Today, the Southeast Asia country is running out of oxygen as it endures a devastating wave of coronavirus cases and the government is seeking emergency supplies from other countries, including Singapore and China.
A shipment of more than 1,000 oxygen cylinders, concentrators, ventilators and other health devices arrived from Singapore on Friday, followed by another 1,000 ventilators from Australia, said Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the government minister in charge of Indonesia's pandemic response.
Beside those donations, Indonesia plans to buy 36,000 tons of oxygen and 10,000 concentrators devices that generate oxygen from neighbouring Singapore, Pandjaitan said.
He said he is in touch with China and other potential oxygen sources. The U.S. and the United Arab Emirates also have offered help.
We recognize the difficult situation Indonesia currently finds itself in with a surge of COVID cases, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. In addition to sending vaccines, the US is working to increase assistance for Indonesia's broader COVID-19 response efforts, she said, without elaborating.
Overall, Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous country, has reported more than 2.4 million infections and 63,760 fatalities from COVID-19. Those figures are widely believed to be a vast undercount due to low testing and poor tracing measures. On Thursday, Indonesia reported nearly 39,000 confirmed cases, its largest one-day jump.
Indonesia's hospitals are swamped, with growing numbers of the ill dying in isolation at home or while waiting to receive emergency care.
On Java, Indonesia's most populous island, hospitals began setting up makeshift intensive care units in mid-June. Many patients are waiting for days to be admitted. Oxygen tanks were rolled out onto sidewalks for those lucky enough to get them, while others have been told they have to find their own.
Emergency rooms at a public hospital in Bandung city closed earlier this week after running out of oxygen amid panic buying fueled by soaring infections in the West Java provincial capital, said Yaya Mulyana, the city's deputy mayor.
Panicked people bought oxygen tanks even though they didn't need them yet, Mulyana said. That has led to oxygen supplies running out.
At one hospital in Yogyakarta, in central Java, 63 COVID-19 patients died in one day -- 33 of them during an outage of its central liquid oxygen supply, though the hospital had switched to using oxygen cylinders, spokesman Banu Hermawan said.
Indonesia donated 3,400 oxygen cylinders and concentrators to India when a brutal outbreak ravaged the country. As its own cases surged, Jakarta then canceled a plan to send another 2,000 oxygen concentrators to India in late June.
The daily need for oxygen has reached 1,928 tons a day. The country's total available production capacity is 2,262 tons a day, according to government data.
I asked for 100% of oxygen go to medical purposes first, meaning that all industrial allocations must be transferred to medical, said Pandjaitan, the government minister. We are racing against time, we have to work fast.
Given the rapid spread of the highly infectious delta variant, he warned that Indonesia could face a worst-case scenario with 50,000 cases a day. The next two weeks will be critical, he said.
The Ministry of Industry responded by issuing a decree that all oxygen supplies be sent to hospitals overflowing with coronavirus patients, and asked industry players to cooperate.
Oxygen is used in making many products, including textiles, plastics and vehicles. Oil refiners, chemical manufacturers and steel makers also use it. But industry leaders have fallen in line in supporting government efforts to maximize supplies for hospitals.
The government has redirected oxygen supplies from industrial plants in Morowali in Central Sulawesi, Balikpapan on Borneo island, and Belawan and Batam on Sumatra islands, Pandjaitan said. Smaller oxygen industries have also been directed to produce pharmaceutical oxygen.
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Houses only for eligible evictees, not encroachers: Dy CM Shivakumar
Bengaluru: Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D K Shivakumar on Tuesday said the state government would not provide houses to encroachers and would rehabilitate only eligible evictees on humanitarian grounds.
Responding to questions on whether housing would be provided to residents evicted during the recent demolition drive at Kogilu in north Bengaluru, Shivakumar said the government would not “gift” anything to those who had illegally occupied government land. He added that strict action would be taken against those who facilitated encroachments.
“There is no appeasement politics. Housing will be provided through the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana only to eligible evictees on humanitarian grounds,” he said.
The Deputy Chief Minister said several evictees had informed officials that they were allowed to set up sheds after paying money to intermediaries. “We will take action against those who collected money and enabled encroachment of government land,” he said.
He added that some evictees had claimed land rights were issued to them in the past. “I have asked officials to verify these claims. Some outsiders have also encroached the land recently. We will identify the original settlers and rehabilitate only genuine beneficiaries,” he said.
Responding to criticism from CPI(M) leaders and MPs from Kerala, Shivakumar said, “We are running our government well. They can make any statement they want, but we will not allow encroachments. The Left government in Kerala, which has not fulfilled promises made to flood victims, has no right to lecture Karnataka.”
Clarifying remarks attributed to him about Kerala, Shivakumar said he had not spoken ill of Keralites. “BJP leader Rajeev Chandrashekhar is twisting my statement and misleading people. I share a good relationship with the people of Kerala. I will campaign in the Kerala elections, and our government will come to power there,” he said.
He also said local body elections would be held next year and that the state’s guarantee schemes would continue.
Meanwhile, Union Minister Shobha Karandlaje and other BJP leaders accused the Congress government of providing houses to “illegal immigrants” evicted from government land at Kogilu. Leader of the Opposition R Ashoka alleged that illegal immigrants from Bangladesh were residing in the area using fake Aadhaar cards.
