Volunteer funeral directors carry Indonesian dead as COVID death toll rises | Indonesia News

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After his job as a taxi driver dried up due to Indonesia’s new coronavirus restrictions, Ardi Novriansyah offered his driving skills to help his hometown’s medical system warp.

Ardi, 41, is one of some 35 volunteers in Bogor, south Jakarta, who retrieve the bodies of people who have died from COVID-19 while isolating themselves in their homes.

Grabbing what he can sleep on a couch at the group’s headquarters in an unused building, Ardi has received round-the-clock calls over the past month.

Ardi says his interest in humanity has led him to accept such a difficult job with camaraderie with his fellow volunteers.

What is important is that we have the desire to help as volunteers, for humanity, he said.

The sight of bodies is something he adapted to during a former job as an ambulance driver.

Indonesians are struggling to cope with a devastating wave of COVID-19 cases triggered by the highly contagious Delta variant, which has overwhelmed hospitals and left many infected people unable to get a hospital bed to simply die at the House.

Indonesia, which is the fourth most populous country in the world with more than 270 million people, this week saw the number of infections reach a daily record close to 57,000, seven times more than there was. a month, and the death toll has doubled since early July to around 1,000 a day.

Lapor COVID-19, a national group that collects pandemic data from the community, said that since June 625 people, mostly in Java, have died from COVID-19 outside of hospitals, the majority of them in self-help. isolation.

Rino Indira, the coordinator of volunteer funeral directors in Bogor, said a 24-hour hotline has been set up and the team is helping to fill a hole in the city’s tense healthcare system.

This is an emergency in Bogor, said Rino, who is also on the COVID-19 local government task force, adding that his team is recovering around seven to nine bodies a day.

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