Indonesia Sees Decline in COVID-19 Cases Yet Hike in Deaths

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indonesia recorded a downward trend in COVID-19 cases by up to 50 percent in the past week, said the spokesman for the COVID-19 Task Force, Wiku Adisasmito. According to him, the declining case number has begun to be seen since the peak of cases on February 20.

“In the previous weeks, the number of cases was recorded at 400,000 cases a week. It has now decreased by half to 200,000. We are still trying to suppress it to a thousand cases per week,” said Wiku in an online press conference on Tuesday, March 8.

He added that the recovery rate had also started to increase to almost 90 percent from 86 percent. “The hospital bed occupancy rate at the national [COVID-19] referral hospitals has started to decline over the last ten days from 38.79 percent to 28.2 percent.”

Though the condition started improving, Wiku said the death toll still increased. The task force noted that on February 21-27, there were 1,708 deaths and in the following week, the figure rose to 2,099.

Wiku thus encouraged vulnerable groups including the elderly or people with comorbidities to receive a complete vaccination course.

Moreover, the emergence of new virus variants could drop the vaccine effectiveness which also leads to a drop in the established herd immunity. On the other hand, COVID-19 vaccine development takes time and cannot keep up with the emergence of new virus variants.

Read: Govt Extends Shelf Life of 18 Millions Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine

M JULNIS FIRMANSYAH