90% of Covid Cases in Indonesia Omicron: Health Ministry

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Ministry of Health said that Omicron is now the dominant Covid-19 variant in Indonesia, making up 98 percent of active cases. Siti Nadia Tarmizi, the ministry's director for the prevention and control of direct communicable diseases, said that this is due to the highly transmissible characteristics of the new variant of Coronavirus.

"Over the last 30 days, Omicron cases have made up 98 percent of the cases, only two percent is of other variants," Siti said in an online press conference today, February 16. 

Despite it being a highly transmissible variant, Siti said Omicron does not cause severe symptoms like the Delta variant.  

"People who are fully vaccinated can still be infected with Omicron but will have mild or no symptoms at all. This shows the importance of vaccination, which must be followed by the implementation of health protocols," Siti said.

Yesterday, the Omicron wave caused Indonesia's daily case log to reach a new record of more than 57,000. This is higher than Delta's peak of 56,000 cases in July last year.  

Indonesia's Covid-19 caseload has now reached over 4.9 million since the first infection was detected on March 2, 2020. 

Read: Health Ministry Comments on Dropping Covid-19 Cases in Jakarta   

M JULNIS FIRMANSYAH