For weeks, Indonesia, home to about 270 million people, has been reporting thousands of daily cases and hundreds deaths as the highly contagious Delta variant ravages the country, which is fast becoming the new center of Asia's coronavirus crisis.
Jakarta, Indonesia The last time Aris Suharyanto saw his wife was through a hospital window. He never got to meet their newborn baby.
When Suharyanto's pregnant wife Rina Ismawati and two of their three children fell ill last month, he initially thought it was a common cold. But with Covid-19 cases rising in Indonesia, he took them to get tested.The whole family tested positive for Covid-19, including Suharyanto -- and 43-year-old Ismawati was admitted to hospital, where she lay in bed, occasionally sending Suharyanto messages through WhatsApp."She told me that her condition was getting worse," Suharyanto said.
Families do little to protect children from the virus, and even when they are infected, parents often think it's a common cold. Schools were closed last year, and have been closed again as part of this latest lockdown, but Indonesian children are currently on summer holidays. "We don't protect our children. This is the problem," he said.
But for the millions already affected by Covid, those vaccines will come too late. For Kinanti and her baby Zhafran, the situation is looking up. His doctor is more optimistic about his survival, but warns that Zhafran might always have diminished lung capacity. She says she underestimated Covid, and thought it was impossible that it could affect her child:"I was late when I reached the hospital, and I really regret it.
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