Indonesia overtakes India to become Asia’s Covid-19 hotspot

With daily Covid cases crossing the 40,000-mark for two consecutive days, Indonesia has overtaken India as Asia's new hotspot for the Covid-19 pandemic.

Indonesia reported a record high of 47,899 cases on Tuesday, however, its current numbers are still far from India's peak of 4,00,000 daily cases in May.

Officials have warned that the highly transmissible delta variant, which was first found in India, is spreading at an alarming pace outside of the country's main island, Java, and could exhaust frontline workers along with a substantial impact on oxygen supply and medicines.

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More alarming is that despite having more daily infections, Indonesia's population of 270 million is just a fifth of India's. Indonesia now has around 132 cases per million people, compared with India's 26 as of Sunday, according to Covid data tracker website ourworldindata.org.