Dying alone in Indonesia's grim battle with Covid-19

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A firefighter hauling the dead from their homes, a lack of access to oxygen and a community banding together during a time of crisis. These are scenes that have emerged from Indonesia, a country currently seeing its worst Covid outbreak so far.pg gaming 

With more than 2.7 million infections so far - this week alone has seen record-breaking daily case numbers surpassing 50,000 - it has become Asia's new Covid epicentre.

As the new highly transmissible Delta variant continues to ravage the country, Indonesia appears to be facing a worsening crisis.

A firefighter on the Covid frontline
Wirawan is a firefighter in Jakarta - but instead of battling fires, he's been tasked with handling the bodies of Covid victims.

For the past year, he and his seven teammates - all dressed in full PPE gear - have been responsible for picking up bodies from their homes, tending to the corpses, before finally delivering them for burial.

Many of the dead, he says, died alone - possibly because they were unable to get immediate treatment or were turned away by hospitals.

"Often, [their] neighbors give us a call and say 'this person hasn't been seen during their self-isolation'. Then they discover that they've died. That's the [kind of case] we see every day," he says.

Before the latest spike in cases, he arranged two or three funerals a day. Now he gets calls for up to 24 funerals a day - more than he can handle.