Coronavirus: Indonesia has 1 million plus fewer cases than the United States

Indonesia has a population of around 267 million. The US has a population of 333 million. When it comes to coronavirus cases (as of April 27th), Indonesia had 9,096 cases while the US had 1,010,356 cases. The first couple cases were identified in Indonesia at the start of March while at the same time the US had fewer than 200 cases. Is Indonesia really doing that much better than the United States in controlling the spread of the virus?

What is potentially driving this huge discrepancy between Indonesia and the US:

1. Perhaps the spread of the virus is slowed by the fact that Indonesia's population is spread across five main islands with a total of 17,508 islands in total. I couldn't really find anything specific, but perhaps since the outbreak travel between islands have dropped, helping reduce the spread of virus.



2. There is also the issue of testing with the United States testing 17,211 per million population while Indonesia is at 275 per million.

What I would say is that social distancing and lockdowns are unlikely the reason. Currently, the lockdowns are mostly in Jakarta and per the The South China Morning Post measures include:

A. Gatherings are limited to 5 people.
B. Masks are to be worn in public.
C. Dining in restaurants is prohibited.
D. Curbs on public transportation.

Other articles also list

E. Many restrictions didn't occur until April 10th (California and New York acted prior to that date).
F. Schools closed in mid-March.
G. Office workers told to work from home.

Those measures don't seem all that extreme. One would think that there should be at least 50x the cases and deaths (currently at 765).

According to Reuters (via Yahoo), an analysis indicates that a little less than 3,000 have died:

More than 2,200 Indonesians have died with acute symptoms of COVID-19 but were not recorded as victims of the disease, a Reuters review of data from 16 of the country's 34 provinces showed.

Three medical experts said the figures indicated the national death toll was likely to be much higher than the official figure of 765.

On March 28th, the US had 2,754 deaths and 124,788 cases. If you look at it this way and assume the revised death estimate is accurate, Indonesia's cases are perhaps 14x higher.

The Positive and The Negative

What seems positive for Indonesia is what the LA Times writes:

Early data suggest moves in mid-March to close schools and make office employees work from home helped bring the disease’s reproductive rate from as high as four (meaning for every infected person, four others got the disease) down to two, according to Panji Hadisoemarto, an epidemiologist at Padjadjaran University School of Medicine in Bandung, Indonesia.

After the new measures were introduced April 10, which included restricting gatherings of more than five people, the rate dropped to 1.2.

Yet, if you're only testing 275 people, how do you really know that the reproductive rate is at 1.2?

What looks negative for Indonesia is what Al Jazeera writes:

President Widodo continues to oppose blanket lockdown because he says it would hurt the poor too much in a country where nearly one in 10 people earn less than a dollar a day.

. . . "If you don't put in a lockdown, 10 percent of the population could die from coronavirus. But if you do, people will die of starvation. Indonesia can't enforce a lockdown for very long, and we know it could be years until a vaccine is developed. 

So like many poor nations, Indonesia must consider opening up the country much sooner than wealthier nations (Sweden excluded).