Jakarta, Indonesia – In a residential street in Bogor, on the outskirts of the Indonesian capital, yet another family has lost a loved one to COVID-19.
Sitting in front of her father’s body, a young woman sobs as she clutches her prayer beads.
“Wake up, please don’t sleep,” she wails, as a team of undertakers carefully wraps his body in sanitised plastic.
The sound of grief is all too familiar to 32-year-old Muhammad Jauhar, who is part of the team assisting families in the area.
“We do various jobs in this task force, I drive the ambulance for the deceased and I prepare many things – including the coffin and the shroud,” he told Al Jazeera.
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The Pandemic Has a New Epicenter: Indonesia
The suffering that ravaged places like India and Brazil with deaths soaring, hospitals overwhelmed and oxygen running out has reached Southeast Asia.
Covid-19 patients in a tent outside Dr. Sardjito General Hospital in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, on Thursday. Credit.Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
July 17, 2021, 7:24 p.m. ET
BEKASI, Indonesia By the thousands, they sleep in hallways, tents and cars, gasping for air as they wait for beds in overcrowded hospitals that may not have oxygen to give them. Others see hospitals as hopeless, even dangerous, and take their chances at home.