Indonesia turns to telemedicine for COVID-19 treatment as hospitals struggle to offer care

As Indonesia is battling an explosion of COVID-19 cases that has strained its health care system, health minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin, on Monday, assured the citizens to provide free telemedicine services to coronavirus patients with mild symptoms. This move comes following the deaths of 63 patients since Saturday after a public hospital on Indonesia’s main island of Java ran out of liquid oxygen amid an abrupt surge in coronavirus cases due to the Delta variant, which was first identified in India.

According to the statement released following the press conference of the health minister, the Remote services will be provided from July 6. The ministry has hired technology-based firms such as Alodokter and Halodoc which will provide free consultations and medication delivery to patients suffering from mild COVID-19 symptoms.

"In order to provide hassle-free hospital services to the COVID-19 patients who are suffering from medium, heavy, and critical symptoms, we are now initiating remote medical services which would provide a major relief to those who have to wait in a long queue at hospitals," said the Indonesia health minister.

75 percent of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients

According to the July 2 reports published by the health ministry, the nationwide hospital bed occupancy was at 75 percent. However, some hospitals in Java have reported over 90 percent capacity, including in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta.According to the statistic published by Worldometer-- a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics on Covid-19-- as many as 2,284,084 people got infected with coronavirus, of which 60,582 have died. It also asserted that 1,928,274 people have been recovered so far.  

COVID Mayhem: 63 died due to oxygen shortage

At least 63 virus patients died during treatment for COVID-19 in the hospital since Saturday, out of which, 33 of them during the period when the central liquid oxygen supply ran out, even though the hospital switched to using oxygen cylinders during the outage. According to the hospital spokesman Banu Hermawan, the oxygen shortage in the city’s largest clinic was due to an uptick in patients visiting in worsening conditions. Across Java, hospitals began to construct plastic tents in mid-June to serve as makeshift ICUs, and patients waited for days before being admitted.

(Image Credit: PTI)