Indonesia's hundreds of suspected child virus deaths highlight danger

Iyansyah, 45, shows on his phone a picture of his child Fahri, who died from coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at the age of nine months in a private hospital that did not have any care for children amid the outbreak, his father told Reuters in Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia June 1, 2020. REUTERS/Abdul Latief Apriaman

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Hundreds of children in Indonesia are believed to have died from COVID-19, giving the Southeast Asian country one of the world's highest rates of child deaths from the novel coronavirus that experts around the world say poses little danger to the young.

Paediatricians and health officials in the world’s fourth most populous country said the high number of child deaths from a disease that mostly kills the elderly was due to underlying factors, in particular malnutrition, anaemia and inadequate child health facilities.