Parts of Indonesia lack oxygen supplies as the number of critically ill COVID-19 patients who need it increases, the nation’s pandemic response leader said Monday, after dozens of sick people died at a public hospital that ran out of its central supply.
The distribution has been hampered by an increase of three to four times the amount (of oxygen) required, according to Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the coordinating maritime affairs and investment minister. Pandjaitan said at the virtual news conference that the government is asking oxygen producers to devote their entire supply to medical needs and that if necessary, it will import it.
On June 26, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikit stated that the government had guaranteed oxygen supply for COVID-19 patients. Since Saturday, 19 patients have died while receiving treatment at Dr. Sardjito General Hospital in Yogyakarta city, with 33 of them dying during the hospital’s central liquid oxygen supply outage, despite the fact that the hospital switched to using oxygen cylinders during that time, according to hospital spokesman Banu Hermawan.
According to Hermawan, their deteriorating health played the biggest role in their deaths. After 15 tonnes of liquid oxygen were delivered, the hospital’s central oxygen supply was restored at 4:45 a.m. Sunday. Medical oxygen is available in two forms: liquid and compressed.
In the last two weeks, COVID-19 cases have risen dramatically in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country. On Sunday, the Health Ministry reported 27,233 new cases of the virus, with 555 deaths. More than 2,284,000 cases have been reported in the country, with 60,582 deaths.
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