Indonesia has called for the nation's oxygen supplies to be sent to hospitals overflowing with coronavirus patients as fresh cases and deaths hit new records.

Oxygen producers had been told to allocate their stocks to the medical sector as the country is battered by an unprecedented wave of infections driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, said senior minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.

“We have enough oxygen supply, but demand is up three-to-four fold so there have been distribution gridlocks,” he was quoted as saying by AFP.

“There's supply from five oxygen producers and we've asked them to allocate 100 per cent of their oxygen to the health sector,” he added.