The Spike In COVID-19 After Eid Is Predicted To Continue To Rise Until The End Of June

JAKARTA - Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin predicts that COVID-19 cases will continue to increase until the end of June. The increase in cases began to appear a few weeks after the Eid holiday.

This was conveyed by Budi Gunadi after a limited ministerial/institutional level meeting chaired by President Joko Widodo at the State Palace.

"Based on empirical experience, in every previous long holiday, namely the long holiday or the long Eid al-Fitr holiday, and other long holidays last year, usually the increase will reach a peak of around 5 to 7 weeks," said Minister of Health Budi in the Presidential Secretariat's Youtube show, Monday. , May 31.

Currently, there are 102,006 active cases of COVID-19 or patients being treated and undergoing isolation. In fact, during Eid al-Fitr, there were less than 100 thousand active cases.

"So, there has been an increase, although this figure is still far below the peak figure that we have achieved at the beginning of the year which is around 170 thousand," said the Minister of Health.

Budi said that currently the average occupancy of isolation beds and ICUs nationally is still around 25 percent. However, there are a number of provinces whose capacity is running low.

The provinces are Aceh, Riau, Riau Islands, Jambi for Sumatra Island. Then, some provinces in Sulawesi. Budi also highlighted the spike in cases in Kudus, Central Java.

"Indeed, recently there has been a tremendous increase in Kudus, both in terms of confirmed cases and hospital admissions," said Budi.

Currently, Kudus Regency is included in the red zone or an area with a high risk of COVID-19. The occupancy of isolation beds and ICUs in Kudus has reached 90 percent. In fact, there are hospitals that are no longer able to accept new COVID-19 patients.

The spike in cases in Kudus was caused by gathering activities during Eid al-Fitr 1442 H and the large number of homecomers celebrating Eid there. Thus, family COVID-19 clusters have sprung up.

The Minister of Health said that the limited number of beds for the treatment of corona virus patients in Kudus had been followed up by distributing some patients to hospitals in surrounding areas, such as Semarang.

"We continue to coordinate with the Governor (Ganjar Pranowo). The previous patients who came from areas around Kudus such as Pati, then Sragen, we also directed them to other hospitals outside Kudus," he concluded.