The Jakarta Post

Indonesia reports first Omicron deaths

Organizers will not sell tickets to public because of COVID-19

Dio Suhenda

More than a month after the Omicron variant was first discovered in the country, the highly transmissible but less fatal variant has claimed its first fatality amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases, prompting calls for the government to expedite vaccination of the elderly.

Health Ministry spokesperson Siti Nadia Tarmizi told The Jakarta Post on Sunday that the country’s first two Omicron-related deaths were a 64-year-old man and a 54-year-old woman with “severe comorbidities”.

The man, Nadia said, was a local transmission case and died in Sari Asih Hospital in Ciputat, on the outskirts of Jakarta, while the woman was an imported case. She recently traveled to the Netherlands and was believed to have contracted the virus there before testing positive upon returning to Indonesia. She died at the Sulianti Saroso Infectious Diseases Hospital in North Jakarta.

“He was unvaccinated and had been diagnosed with hypertension and kidney complications, while the woman, although vaccinated, had severe diabetes,” Nadia said.

Indonesia’s first two Omicronrelated deaths came amid a national uptick in COVID -19 figures, with the country reporting 3,200 new cases on Saturday, the highest in over four months. It remains unclear how many of the cases are Omicron infections.

By Saturday, the tally of Omicron cases was 1,161 since the first case was reported in mid-December.

COVID-19 task force spokesperson Wiku Adisasmito said on Thursday, without revealing whether the cases were of Omicron or Delta or any other variants, that Indonesia had reported an increasing number of coronavirus cases in the past three weeks, or since the start of the year. Active cases, he said, had also jumped to 8,600 cases last week, compared to only 5,400 cases a week before.

Although authorities had initially attributed Indonesia’s case spike to international arrivals who tested positive for the virus at the country’s entry points, Wiku said COVID-19 infections since Jan. 15 had been dominated by cases of local transmission.

“To prevent more local transmission, [we are] calling on the public to closely follow health protocols,” Wiku said during a press briefing, while also urging the public not to travel abroad.

The number of COVID-19 daily deaths, however, has largely remained low — at below 10 — since the first Omicron case was discovered in the country.

Although cases were expected to still be on the rise before reaching a peak in February or March, Wiku said the government remained optimistic that the worstcase scenario could be avoided in the coming months, especially leading toward public holidays, when mobility is expected to rise. This includes Idul Fitri, the biggest Muslim celebration in the country, which falls in early May this year.

Lackluster mobility restrictions during last year’s Idul Fitri holiday were thought to be partly behind the country’s deadly second wave of cases that was fueled by the transmissible and more deadly Delta variant.

Although authorities have assured that Indonesia is in a much better position to deal with the threat of another variant, epidemiologist Dicky Budiman said another deadly wave of cases might be inevitable unless the government could address its vaccination issues.

“Whether it’s the Omicron variant, the Delta variant or the original Wuhan variant, these strains all put the same groups of people at risk: the elderly and those yet to have immunity against the virus, either through vaccination or infection,” he said on Sunday.

Indonesia has so far managed to fully vaccinate about 124 million people, or 59.6 percent of the target population. The government also started to administer a third vaccination dose for the general population on Jan. 12, in a bid to keep public immunity up against the Omicron variant.

However, vaccination for the elderly remains lagging, with only 10 million people, or 46 percent of the target population, having been fully inoculated. This is despite 46.8 percent of the country’s 144,000 COVID-19 deaths coming from this age group.

The “curse” of Olympic overspending looks set to strike again at the Beijing Games, with stringent COVID-19 measures and a loss of ticket sale revenue pushing up costs for China.

It is not unusual for nations to find the bill for hosting an Olympics ballooning, but the pandemic and China’s zero-COVID-19 approach has made preparations for the Feb. 4 to 20 Winter Games particularly difficult.

With increasingly strict rules imposed as domestic outbreaks spread in China, organizers announced last week that they would not sell tickets to the public because of the “complicated” COVID-19 situation.

Instead, invitations will be given to select people. The organizing committee had originally calculated ticketing revenue to be worth US$118 million.

That total was already in question after it was confirmed last year that there would be no international spectators at the Games because of China’s weeks-long quarantine requirements and closed borders.

Budget was a key part of China being awarded the Games, with Beijing winning the bid over only one other contender as other cities backed out over high costs.

Beijing Olympics communications manager Zhao Weidong recently admitted to reporters that the pandemic might mean a need to “increase some expenses”.

However, he pointed out that others could be reduced, without giving specifics.

‘Screwed’

In 2015, Beijing said it was counting on a budget of just over $3 billion, which included the costs of organizing and building sports facilities.

But excluded was a huge amount of new infrastructure needed, including the construction of a high-speed rail line between Beijing and the ski slopes.

The cost of hosting the Olympics usually doubles between the award date and the opening ceremony, experts say.

Wladimir Andreff, a specialist in sports economics from the University of Paris 1 PantheonSorbonne, called it the “curse” of successful Olympics bids.

“Whoever wins them gets screwed,” he said.

To get the Games all candidates “systematically underestimate the costs and overestimate the profits” expected, Andreff added.

The pandemic has brought additional problems and costs.

Last summer’s COVID-19-delayed Tokyo Olympics, the first to be held in during the pandemic, ended up at around twice the budget proposed in the city’s original 2013 bid.

That was even as organizers said they had saved cash by simplifying events and avoiding the cost of hosting fans, with most events closed to spectators.

‘Certain shortfall’

In Beijing, athletes, support staff, volunteers and journalists will all be kept in a “closed loop” to prevent any contact with the population and limit the risk of contamination.

This “bubble” — which is considerably stricter than the one in Tokyo — requires a battery of measures to isolate Games participants from the outside world, as well as daily COVID-19 screening tests.

Andreff said the absence of international spectators should not be underestimated.

“Hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists who were expected will not come,” said Andreff. “There will be a certain shortfall due to the pandemic.”

But Andrew Zimbalist, a specialist in sports economics at Smith College in the United States, cautioned that even without the virus, assumptions that the Games drew more tourists were not necessarily correct.

In 2008 — when Beijing hosted a Summer Olympics — tourism dropped by around a fifth, he said, amid heavy security measures.

“Normal tourists were discouraged from going to Beijing 2008 because they were concerned about congestion, high prices and the possibility of terrorism or other potentially dangerous incidents,” he said.

“So normal tourism goes down as Olympic tourism goes up.”

All about image

Beijing is hoping for a financial boost domestically that will last long beyond the Games.

The government committed to introducing 300 million Chinese to winter sports — a goal achieved, according to official figures — which they hope will generate a profitable future industry.

But this also means new infrastructure.

The Yanqing resort, for example, was built especially for the Olympics — constructing the first track in China for bobsleigh, skeleton and luge from scratch.

Matthieu Llorca, a lecturer at the University of Burgundy, said additional costs would probably be linked to pandemic control and not integrated into the final Olympics budget.

He said this reallocation would allow authorities to claim the Games were both “successful and at a lower cost”.

Ultimately, he said, China — the world’s second-largest economy — would probably not worry too much about the money.

“They don’t look at how much it will cost,” he said.

“They will look at the image of the country.”

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2022-01-24T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-01-24T08:00:00.0000000Z

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