The Community Is Urged To Immediate Vaccinations To Anticipate The Third Wave Of COVID-19

JAKARTA - The Minister of Communication and Information, Johnny G Plate, asked the public to continue to implement health protocols and hasten vaccinations to anticipate the risk of the emergence of a third wave of the pandemic.

"Stay disciplined with health protocols and speed up vaccinations to anticipate the 3rd wave of COVID-19", Johnny said as quoted by Antara, Tuesday, September 28.

The Minister of Communication and Information, Johnny explained, the results of the evaluation of the implementation of Restrictions on Community Activities (PPKM) during the past week until September 26, 2021, showed improvement. For example, in Java and Bali, 3 districts/cities can drop from level 3 to 2.

One of them is Blitar City, which experienced a decline in the PPKM level because vaccination coverage reached 92 percent and the rate of COVID-19 cases continued to improve.

Meanwhile, of the 10 regencies/cities outside Java and Bali that implement PPKM level 4, 2 regencies/cities can go down to level 2, namely Banjarmasin and Kutai Kartanegara. In addition, there are 7 regencies/cities to level 3. It is recorded that there is only 1 regency/city that is still at level 4, namely Bangka Regency.

"The official PPKM level status update in each region will still be submitted on October 4, 2021, according to the initial scenario. And PPKM status updates will be submitted every 2 weeks, the evaluation will still be weekly", explained the Minister of Communication and Information.

The Minister of Communication and Information added that the national daily case number is now at 1,760 cases, down 96 percent from its peak on July 15, 2021, which reached 56,757 cases. Currently, the number of active cases nationwide is 42,769 cases, or down 92.6 percent from its peak on July 24, 2021, which was 574,135 active cases.

"The national positivity rate for the last 7 days was below 1 percent with the average number of people being tested reaching 170 thousand days", he said.

Johnny said the government asked all regions to maximize all existing instruments to optimize the handling of COVID-19 so that the PPKM level in their respective regions could be lowered.

"In addition, the key remains to be strengthened by vaccination with a national target of 2.3 - 2.5 million injections per day and discipline in implementing health protocols", said the Minister of Communication and Information.