“People in this region are cautious, because they have seen it right in front of them — 400,000 cases a day in India — and they really don’t want it to repeat here,” he said in a telephone interview from Kuala Lumpur.
But those measures take time to achieve the desired effect, and right now countries are struggling to cope.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation with some 270 million people, reported 1,449 deaths on Thursday, its deadliest day since the start of the pandemic.
Daily cases through about mid-June had been about 8,000, but then began to spike and peaked last week with more than 50,000 new infections each day. Because Indonesia’s testing rate is low, the actual number of new cases is thought to be much higher.
As hospitals there began to run out of oxygen, the government stepped in and ordered manufacturers to shift most production from industrial…
