But health experts warned it could trigger a fresh wave of cases, as the highly infectious Delta variant tears across the vast archipelago, which has overtaken India and Brazil to become the global pandemic epicentre.

Shopping malls and mosques in less affected parts of the Muslim-majority nation also got the green light to open their doors from Monday, to limited crowds and with shorter hours. Offices were still under shutdown orders.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation where tens of millions live hand to mouth, has avoided strict lockdowns seen in some other countries. But the government has been widely criticised for its handling of the pandemic and policies that critics say prioritised Southeast Asia’s largest economy over public health.

Indonesia’s vaccination levels remain well below the government’s 1 million-a-day target for July and less than 7 per cent of its 270 million people have been fully inoculated with two jabs.

The country has reported a total of more than 3.2 million cases and 86,835 virus deaths, but those official figures are widely believed to be a severe undercount due to low testing and tracing rates.

Since early this month, nearly 19,000 foreign nationals have left through Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in the capital, Jakarta. The exodus increased significantly in the past three days alone, accounting for nearly half of all individual departures this month.

Japan’s ambassador to Indonesia, Kenji Kanasugi, said the difficulty of getting vaccines for foreign nationals has prompted some Japanese citizens to get vaccinated in their home country.

“Amid a pandemic situation that is very difficult for all of us, some Japanese citizens in Indonesia will temporarily return to Japan,” Kanasugi said on Instagram earlier this month.

Japanese and Chinese nationals made up the largest share of departures, with 2,962 and 2,219 individuals respectively, followed by 1,616 South Korean citizens. Airport figures also showed departures by 1,425 Americans, as well as 842 French, 705 Russian, 700 British, 615 German and 546 Saudi Arabian citizens.

Thai patients sent back to hometowns

Authorities in Thailand began transporting some people who tested positive for the coronavirus from Bangkok to their hometowns on Tuesday for isolation and treatment to alleviate the burden on the capital’s overwhelmed medical system.

A train carrying more than 100 patients and medical workers in full protective gear left the city for the northeast.

It will drop patients off in seven provinces, where they will be met by health officers and taken to hospitals.

Medical authorities in Bangkok said Monday that all ICU beds for Covid-19 patients at public hospitals were full and that some of the sick were being treated in emergency rooms. Officials said they have asked army medics to help out at civilian hospitals.

“These are patients from Bangkok who haven’t received treatment in hospitals. We want to bring them to doctors in their hometowns. And the travelling process is controlled all through the journey,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who was on hand to watch the operation.

“We will continue this service until no Covid-19 patients who cannot get beds in Bangkok are left,” he said.

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He said buses, vans and even aircraft might be deployed to send people back to less badly affected provinces.

Thailand initially kept coronavirus cases in check but outbreaks have flared in recent months.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s government is facing harsh criticism over its handling of a Delta variant-fuelled surge and slow vaccination programme, amid reports of people dying in the streets or in their homes while waiting for treatment.

Of Thailand’s total of nearly 500,000 confirmed cases and more than 4,000 fatalities, 137,263 cases and 2,176 deaths have been recorded in Bangkok.

Meanwhile, some temples in the devoutly Buddhist country have begun to offer free cremations as the number of deaths rises, the government said.

Cases surge in Australia’s biggest state

A total of 172 new local cases were detected in New South Wales, up from 145 a day earlier.

Of the new cases, at least 60 spent time while infectious in the community while the isolation status of 32 cases remained under investigation, state Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.

A busy shopping centre in Sydney’s southwest has been added to virus exposure sites and anyone who visited at any time over a 10-day period has been classified as a close contact who should test and self isolate for two weeks.

More than half of Australia’s near 26 million population has been in lockdown in recent weeks after an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant took hold in Sydney and spread to three states.

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Australia’s largest city is into its fifth week of a lockdown, which is due to end on Friday but strict stay-home rules could be extended further as daily new cases have stubbornly remained above 100 and less than 13 per cent of the New South Wales population is fully vaccinated.

“We need to get the number of infectious people in the community close to zero as possible before we open up,” Berejiklian said.

Meanwhile, Victoria state will begin easing its Covid-19 lockdown restrictions as planned from Tuesday night, Premier Daniel Andrews said, after the state reported fewer new cases.

People can leave their homes for any reason but several restrictions would remain, including a ban on guests in homes and masks being mandatory both indoors and outdoors, Andrews said. “All in all, this is a good day.”

Victoria detected 10 new local cases, down from 11 a day earlier, with all infections linked to the latest outbreak and in quarantine throughout their infectious period.

Bhutan vaccination drive ‘a success’

Bhutan has inoculated most of its eligible population with second doses of Covid-19 vaccinations in a week, in a speedy roll-out hailed by Unicef on Monday as a “success story” for international donations.

More than 454,000 shots were administered over the past week in the remote Himalayan kingdom – just over 85 per cent of the eligible adult population of more than 530,000 people – after a recent flood of foreign donations.

Unicef’s Bhutan representative, Will Parks, hailed the ambitious vaccination drive as a “great success story for Bhutan”.

“We really need a world in which the countries which have surplus vaccines really do donate to those countries that haven’t received [shots] so far,” he said.

“And if there’s anything that I hope the world that can learn, is that a country like Bhutan with very few doctors, very few nurses but a really committed king and leadership in the government mobilising society – it’s not impossible to vaccinate the whole country.”

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The tiny nation had quickly used up most of the 550,000 AstraZeneca jabs donated by India in late March and early April for first jabs, before the neighbouring country halted exports over a massive local surge in infections.

Faced with a growing time gap between first and second doses, Bhutan launched an appeal for donations.

Half a million Moderna doses donated by the United States via Covax – the distributor backed by the World Health Organization and the Gavi vaccine alliance – and another 250,000 AstraZeneca shots from Denmark arrived in mid-July.

More than 150,000 AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sinopharm shots are also expected to arrive in the South Asian nation of 770,000 people from Croatia, Bulgaria, China and other countries.

Additional reporting by Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press