Experts Reveal Patterns of COVID Transmission in India-Indonesia are Similar, Cases Sloping After Majority of Residents Are Exposed

JAKARTA - Professor of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia, Tjandra Yoga Aditama, revealed the similarity in the transmission pattern of COVID-19 in India and Indonesia. COVID cases in both India and Indonesia have declined after the majority of their citizens were infected.

According to Tjandra, India conducted research on COVID-19 antibody tests for its citizens in two major cities, namely New Delhi as the nation's capital and Mumbai as an industrial center.

"In New Delhi, the results of the antibody test research from the public are 90 percent positive, although the results have not been officially published in international journals, but 90 percent are positive. Then those in Mumbai are 86 percent positive," Tjandra said at a webinar in Jakarta, quoted from Antara, Tuesday, November 16.

Tjandra analyzed the infection of almost all of the people in the two big cities as one of the factors how India managed to reduce the rate of COVID-19 infection very significantly and quickly.

Tjandra, who has lived in India while serving as Director of WHO, stated that the pattern of spikes in COVID-19 cases and the decline in cases after that was followed by a sloping down of COVID-19 cases in India had the same pattern as in Indonesia.

Indonesia had a very high spike in cases in mid-2021, then cases decreased systematically in the following two months and stayed sloping below 1000 cases per day from October 15 to today, or has persisted for a whole month.

Nevertheless, Tjandra emphasized that the whole world is still engulfed in uncertainty regarding the COVID-19 pandemic which has been around for almost two years.

He explained that COVID-19 is only two years old and there is still a lot of information that researchers need to dig deeper in order to be able to carry out more precise prevention and control.

He compared with other dangerous diseases whose ages are tens to hundreds of years, they tend to be controlled through adequate (adequate) prevention and treatment procedures because they already have information about the disease.