Sardjono Utomo’s condition is critical, with respiratory failure.
Their deaths rang an alarm bell in the world’s fourth most populous country, where the pandemic became increasingly severe, putting great pressure on the health system, which lacked equipment.
In the past 10 days, Indonesia recorded a record high number of people infected with nCoV 4 times, the record was on December 3 with 8,369 new cases.
`It seems that overcrowding has reached its worst level during the pandemic,` said Halik Malik, spokesman for the Indonesian Medical Association.
Public health experts say Indonesia has struggled to control the spread of the virus since March. The country currently records more than 570,000 cases of infection and at least 17,000 deaths from Covid-19.
Doctor Sardjono Utomo (left) and his wife (right), while still alive.
Dr. Sardjono lives in Pamekasan, a small district of Madura island bordering the Java Sea.
`Every hospital is full, and so is Pamekasan. Everything is reaching its limit,` said Dr. Syaiful Hidayat, a pulmonologist who treated Mr. Sardjono.
Dr. Sardjono’s son-in-law, Arif Rahman, 41, said the deaths of him and his wife demonstrated the severe shortage of medical equipment in the country’s hospitals.
In an interview about why Dr. Sardjono did not have a ventilator, Febriadhitya Prajatara, Surabaya spokesman, said the hospital was too slow and this was not the city government’s fault.
But other ominous signs have begun to appear across the island of Java.
The situation in Jakarta is no brighter.
Irma Hidayana, co-founder of the project, commented: `The overload of ICUs in specialized hospitals treating Covid-19 shows that the government is not serious in handling the pandemic.`
According to data from the Jakarta government, 97% of isolation beds at 98 referral hospitals are full, while 74% of ICU beds are also in this situation.
In interviews with Reuters, Indonesia’s Covid-19 Task Force, the National Hospital Association and the Jakarta Health Office did not provide any additional data.
However, at a press conference on December 3, Force spokesman Wiku Adisasmito said 57.97% of beds nationwide were empty as of December 1.
Part of the 1,315 ventilators have been distributed to many areas.
`Who do you want to invite out? We can’t do that. It shows that Covid-19 is right here and it’s real. This can happen to anyone and we don’t have enough beds available.`