Why are South Korean Covid-19 death rates so low and Indonesian ones so high?
Asia Times’ Northeast Asia Editor Andrew Salmon last week wrote about why South Korea’s Covid-19 death rates have been so low. Understandably there are many looking for answers and explanations around Covid-19 and Salmon’s article has, since publication last week, been read by hundreds of thousands of people across the globe.
The article cites World Health Organization data from March 6 that shows the global crude mortality ratio for Covid-19 – that is, the number of reported deaths divided by the number of reported cases – was between 3-4%. In Korea, on March 9, the day Salmon’s story was published, that figure was a mere 0.7%.
Salmon, writing in Seoul, concluded this low rate was essentially due to a combination that included a robust national health service, strong prior experience of virus outbreaks and related preparations, and aggressive execution of testing, isolation and treatment protocols that are fully backed by the law. And, also, a lucky dose of Korean good fortune.
Compare the South Korea numbers to those in Indonesia, where on Thursday the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security put the country’s Covid-19 mortality rate at above 8%.
This means Indonesia currently has the highest recorded rate in the world and, according to John McBeth writing in Jakarta, health professionals suspect the toll there is almost certainly higher and point to an elevated morbidity rate among already unhealthy older people who were not tested or, as is common in Indonesia, never subject to a post-mortem autopsy.
In direct contrast to South Korea, McBeth writes that Indonesia is not systematically testing or enforcing isolation and suffers from a creaking health system that is ill-equipped to deal with a massive medical emergency.
With a population of 264 million, Indonesia now says it has 360 hospitals reserved for coronavirus referrals and specialized testing. Before there were just 132 hospitals designated for Covid-19 and only 88 ventilators. In the southern province of West Kalimantan, with a population of almost 4.5 million, there is just one ventilator.
But Indonesia, of course, is not the only country staring into the dark unknown.
Unmasked: Covid-19 has yet to sweep through the world’s refugee camps, like the densely populated and unsanitary ones along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, where more than one million Rohingya currently reside
Asia Times Middle East Editor Alison Tahmizian Meuse on Thursday wrote that Iran was reporting Covid-19 infection rates of 50 new cases per hour while deaths there are occurring every 10 minutes.
Malaysia, reports Nile Bowie in Kuala Lumpur, had a relatively low number of coronavirus cases and appeared to have managed the situation well, through selective travel restrictions and a transparent response that earned World Health Organization (WHO) praise. This week, however, infection rates soared to 1,000, which meant, very suddenly, Malaysia was reporting the highest number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia.
The virus has decimated the world’s financial markets. As David P. Goldman wrote in Asia Times on Wednesday, investors have had “no place to hide as stock and bond markets tanked simultaneously for the first time since the 1980s”.
Most worryingly still is that Covid-19 has yet to sweep through the world’s refugee camps, like the densely populated, unsanitary and utterly ill-equipped ones along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, where more than one million very vulnerable Rohingya people currently reside.
Refugee camps are ordinarily prone to all kinds of communicable diseases and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is currently attempting to set up suppression programs based on isolation.
Fightback: A team of Australian researchers have been given the green light to start human trials of a drug treatment that eradicated the Covid-19 virus in lab tests
China’s own isolation-based suppression programs, that saw the closure of factories, businesses and schools, has been deemed so successful that the country has just completed the second week of a “back-to-work program”. However this, wrote Gordon Watts on Tuesday, poses new challenges for Beijing, including the possibility of a “second wave” of Covid-19 infections.
Watts turned to recent research from Imperial College London that says a “major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available… given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed."
There always has to be hope and indeed there is here.
Alan Boyd, writing from Sydney on Thursday, says a team of Australian researchers have been given the green light to start human trials of a promising drug treatment after raising funds from donors in a global appeal.
Covid-19 patients, writes Boyd, will be given two drugs previously used to treat AIDS and malaria at about 50 hospitals in Australia, with tests expected to start by the end of this month. The drugs reportedly eradicated the virus in lab tests.
This news comes after Stanford University School of Medicine reported that a former malaria treatment known as chloroquine may also have been effective in treating the disease in China and Singapore while other reports say the redundant AIDS drug remdesivir may have also worked in the treatment of patients in the PRC.
Hooray for the good news.
Read the full stories on Asia Times
Why Indonesia has world’s highest Covid-19 death rate by John McBeth
Why are Korea’s Covid-19 death rates so low? by Andrew Salmon
Iran flags 50 new coronavirus cases per hour by Alison Tahmizian Meuse
Malaysia loses its grip on Covid-19 outbreak by Nile Bowie
A bridge loan too far blows up world bond markets by David P Goldman
Rohingya refugee camps a Covid-19 time bomb by Bertil Linter
China risks a Covid-19 second wave by Gordon Watts
Australia lab may have found Covid-19 cure by Alan Boyd
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