New Delhi: The World’s fourth-most populous nation Indonesia recorded a noticeable hike in the fatalities of children amid the rising of Delta variant in the novel coronavirus in the country. The Indonesian Pediatric society reported that 100 children have died of coronavirus each week during July.
According to a local media report, The Indonesian Pediatric society said that “Children now make up 12.5 percent of total infections, with many of them under 5. The Indonesian Covid-19 Task Force’s recorded more than 700 deaths among children up to mid-July since the start of the pandemic.”
The nation’s pediatric society has monitored the rise of cases among children each week since the beginning of July, as the authorities moved to tighten restrictions on community activities.
Aman Pulungan, chairman of the Indonesian Pediatric Society said that “Three weeks of PPKM, we see the significant rise of child cases. In the first week, overall, there were 3,000-4000 new cases. In the second week, there were 5,000-7,000. And now we even have 17,000 cases per week.”
The government designed multi-tiered public activity restrictions (PPKM) to tackle the deluge and to support small businesses suffering from lockdown curbs. The new data emerged amid a sweeping overall surge in Covid-19 death, which nudged Indonesia this month to overtake India and Brazil as the global epicenter of the pandemic with the highest number of daily injections.
Since the beginning of July, the country’s Health Minister Budi Gunawan Sadikin had promised to rollout 400,000 tests per day. But the country’s weekly average test rate shows only 155,000 tests have been taken.
Since the first day of July, Indonesia has vaccinated more than 700,000 children – many of whom are 12-17 years old.
