East Java total deaths by the end of year 2021 is forecasted to be 27,730 deaths. If they build an additional of 18 hospitals, the total forecasted deaths by the end of year 2021 becomes 19,508 deaths. Based on my analysis, 8,222 lives can be saved by building 18 hospitals in East Java.
18 Hospitals may seem impossible to build quickly. However, we can refer to our neighboring countries to solve this problem. They reuse shipping containers as temporary hospitals. We can refer to South Korea that is currently facing critical situation, since the coronavirus spreads more easily in cold weather. 2 public hospitals in South Korea use shipping containers as makeshift treatment facilities.
To provide meaningful insights to Indonesian authorities, specifically East Java, I would like to encourage them to build 18 hospitals in East Java. Each city in East Java can build 2 hospitals. This way hospitals are more dispersed throughout East Java. Unfortunately, I can’t analyze which city in East Java that has the hardest time fighting this virus as the dataset is only grouped by province.
In addition, further research needs to be conducted to validate this argument. This analysis is limited to only the COVID-19 dataset and referral hospitals in each province. To strengthen the argument, other factors such as medical equipment, number of ventilators, health protocol, number of public places and even medical skills in each province can be put under consideration for further analysis. This way, we can find the absolute reason to why East Java has the most deaths.
This analysis ignores several factors like the effect of vaccines in the future, health protocol (citizen behavior in wearing masks and social distancing), hospital equipment and more. Of course I hope that no more people are going to die because of this pandemic and vaccines can cut down deaths in the future.
I hope that this analysis can provide meaningful insights to Indonesian authorities and medical experts in preventing this pandemic to spread even more in the future.