Indonesia Discontinues Largest Covid-19 Hospital

Indos · Dec 25, 2022

Indonesia Discontinues Largest Covid-19 Hospital

BY :THE JAKARTA GLOBE
DECEMBER 24, 2022

Jakarta. The Indonesian government has decided to discontinue its largest, makeshift Covid-19 hospital occupying the former Asian Games athletes’ village or Wisma Atlet in Jakarta due to a steady decline in new cases, according to a memo released on Saturday.

The makeshift hospital was set up less than three weeks after the Health Ministry confirmed the country’s first Covid cases on March 2, 2020.

With a capacity of up to 3,000 beds in four of 10 towers inside the complex, the makeshift hospital became one of the world’s biggest isolation facilities for Covid patients.

Since it became operational in March 2020, the facility has treated more than 132,000 Covid patients.

The facility will formally end its function on December 31 “due to a steady decline in the number of Covid-19 cases across Indonesia and a significant decrease in the bed occupation rate of the Kemayoran Athletes’ Village makeshift Covid-19 hospital”, according to the memo signed by National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) Head Lieutenant General Suharyanto.

A similar facility on Galang Island in the province of Riau Islands will also be closed down because no Covid patients have been admitted to it for months, Suharyanto said.

Earlier on Wednesday, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo indicated that his government will lift all social restrictions related to Covid-19 that have been in place for nearly three years, suggesting that the country is now well-equipped to deal with the ongoing pandemic.

The president said that the number of daily cases is no longer a threat to the national health system in comparison to the tens of thousands of cases a day during its peak.

The country of 273 million people has recorded 6.7 million cases and over 160,000 deaths since the pandemic began.