There Are Already 18 Cases Of The Delta COVID-19 Variant In Jakarta

JAKARTA - The DKI Jakarta Health Office received data on new variants of COVID-19 cases from the results of the whole genome sequencing (WGS) examination by the Ministry of Health.

Head of Disease Prevention and Control Division of the DKI Jakarta Provincial Health Office, Dwi Oktavia, said that DKI Jakarta had 33 cases of virus mutation, of which 18 cases were of the Delta variant or B1617.2 from India.

"There are 33 cases with new variants or variants of concern (VoC) COVID-19. There are also details of the 33 VoCs, namely 18 Delta variants, 12 Alpha variants (B.117), and 3 Beta variants (B.1.351)," said Dwi in his statement, Thursday, June 17.

From this data, it was identified that 25 cases came from people who had traveled abroad, 3 cases were local transmission outside Jakarta because they were not domiciled in Jakarta, they just checked in Jakarta.

"Then, there are 5 cases of local transmission in Jakarta and the fifth is the Delta variant," he said.

Overall, the DKI Jakarta Health Office sent a total of 980 samples of suspected virus mutations to the Ministry of Health to be examined using the WGS method.

Of these, 289 were declared not to be Variant of Concern (VoC), 33 were VoC, 438 were still waiting for results, 216 were declared negative for COVID-19, 3 WGS results could not be analyzed, and 1 was invalid.

Seeing this data, Dwi appealed to the entire community to remain vigilant against new virus mutations that are more easily transmitted and cause more severe symptoms.

“Every time we meet VoC, we immediately identify imported cases or local transmissions. If the transmission is local, then we will do massive tracing in the community and workplace," he said.

Meanwhile, the Head of the DKI Health Office, Widyastuti, said that the emergence of the Delta variant was a matter of concern. Not to mention, DKI has previously appeared variants of COVID-19 Alpha (B117) and Beta (B1351).

"These new variants are quite inconvenient because they have their own ability to infect us, as we take the example of the Delta B1617.2 variant which is very easy to spread and the Beta B1351 variant which is very easy to make symptoms worse or more deadly," said Widyastuti.

For information, the Delta variant is a COVID-19 mutation from India. This variant is a sub-derivative of the B1617 variant. According to studies, the Delta variant is more contagious and can cause greater morbidity than other variants.