TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Deputy Health Minister Dante Saksono confirmed that there had been cases of local SARS-CoV-2 or coronavirus mutation that causes Covid-19 in Indonesia. Dante said the new variant appearing in the country is different from the genomic mutation detected in Wuhan, China.

"This proves that these variations are changing and the virus will change," said Dante in a hearing with Commission IX of the House of Representatives (DPR) on Thursday, May 27, 2021.

Dante explained that the coronavirus endogenously undergoes natural biological mutations. According to him, variant viruses are classified into Variants of Concern, Variants of Interest, and Variants of Consequence. All these viruses, he added, are clever so they keep mutating to survive.

Dante also said the cases of virus mutation variants from the United Kingdom, India, and Africa had been detected in Indonesia. He opined the government must anticipate the issue to prevent mutated viruses from spreading. "The increase in cases is a combination of people’s mobility and changes in the variant viruses," Dante said.

The Health Ministry had conducted checks on virus mutations in the Variant of Concern category towards 1,744 samples collected from regions throughout the archipelago. "It turns out that there are 54 cases of coronavirus mutations," he said.

The origin of the mutation cases, he went on, were divided into cases from outside the country and local cases. He said 35 out of 54 cases were from abroad, while the rest 19 were local cases. "This means there is already local transmission of Covid-19 mutations in Indonesia for the Variants of Concern category," Dante concluded.

BUDIARTI UTAMI PUTRI