Indonesia hits two million virus cases as crisis deepens

Indonesia hits two million virus cases as crisis deepens

JAKARTA: Indonesia passed two million coronavirus cases yesterday as infection rates soar and hospitals are flooded with new patients, prompting warnings that the Southeast Asian nation's health crisis could spiral out of control. The unwanted milestone comes after daily case rates more than doubled in recent weeks and authorities identified the presence of highly infectious COVID-19 variants.

Yesterday, official figures showed that Indonesia had recorded a daily record high of 14,536 cases, taking the total to just over two million with nearly 55,000 deaths, among a population of nearly 270 million. But those figures are widely thought to be a severe undercount, due to low testing and contact tracing-some experts have said that official cases may only be about 10 percent of the real number.

"It's starting to bubble up to the surface, like a time bomb,“ said Windhu Purnomo, an epidemiologist at Indonesia's Airlangga University. "This is just the beginning. Depending on how things are handled, we could end up with a major explosion like in India.“ Case numbers are spiking as Indonesia grapples with new virus strains, including the highly infectious Delta variant first identified in India.

The rise has also been blamed on millions travelling across the Muslim-majority nation at