‘It’s Too Late’: In Sprawling Indonesia, Coronavirus Surges
The 1,340 Maluku Islands are a long way from anywhere. So remote are these Indonesian isles that the country’s most famous novelist was imprisoned there in a gulag that was actually an archipelago.
But the coronavirus is stalking the farthest reaches of the planet.
The first case of the virus in the Malukus was confirmed in mid-March: a hardware technician who had journeyed from Indonesia’s most populated island, Java. With the central government loath to impose a national lockdown, local officials took matters into their own hands, instituting quarantines and limiting flights and ferries.
It didn’t work. Twenty-five medical workers at one hospital in Ambon, the biggest city in the Malukus, have tested positive for the coronavirus, even though none had contact with Covid-19 patients there. A hat vendor with no history of travel to other Indonesian viral hot spots became sick and died in early May, signaling that community transmission had begun.
Click here to keep reading. Hannah Beech and Muktita Suhartono write for The New York Times.
