Indian naval ship Airawat’s arrival to Indonesia carrying aid for the coronavirus-ravaged country has been delayed, External Affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Monday. “There has been a delay in arrival of INS Airawat reaching Tanjung Priok, Indonesia, carrying 300 oxygen concentrators & 100 MT of Liquid Medical Oxygen from India. Will keep you posted for further developments,” he said.
“India stands with its partners in the fight against Covid,” the minister added.
Indonesia, which had provided oxygen support to India even two months ago when the latter was reeling under an intense second wave of the virus, is grappling with a serious shortage of oxygen supply at the moment. The world’s fourth-most populated country recorded 34,257 new cases of Covid-19 and 1,338 deaths in the last 24 hours, reported ANI.
The Indonesian government has been reaching out to China, Australia and Singapore seeking help to address their oxygen crisis. It had sent around 3,400 oxygen cylinders and concentrators to India in May.
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According to a Reuters report, the Indonesian government plans to set up nearly 8,000 new hospital beds and adopt newer measures to boost the number of health workers and oxygen supplies. The pandemic has disproportionately impacted the country’s poor and on Saturday, Luhut Pandjaitan, the minister leading the fight against the pandemic, apologised for the same saying “it (government policy) is not optimal”.
The health ministry’s vaccination spokesperson, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, said the inoculation drive against the virus remained focussed on Java and Bali as it awaited an increase in production capacity of ready-to-use doses.
Indonesia has distributed 73.6 million doses of vaccine across the archipelago. Jakarta has fully vaccinated 24 per cent of its 8.3 million people and southeast Sulawesi has administered doses to 6 per cent of its two million. A majority of the inoculations has been done with Sinovac shots sent by China. The country also has supplies of AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Moderna vaccines, which are meant to be given to medical workers as booster shots.
