The National COVID-19 Case Reproduction Rate Is Getting Lower

Secretary of the Directorate General of Public Health, Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) Siti Nadia Tarmizi/ Antara

JAKARTA - Secretary of the Directorate General of Public Health of the Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, revealed that the national scale COVID-19 reproduction rate is getting lower.

Based on data from the Ministry of Health, the virus reproduction rate (Rt) in eight major Indonesian islands has decreased from an average of 1.14 on 26 February 2022 to 1.09.

"Current conditions nationally show the trend of handling COVID-19 is improving with daily cases starting to decline. "The rate of virus transmission (Rt) has slowed down in major islands in Indonesia and it is hoped that the reproduction rate of the virus can continue to decline to below 1 in the next month", said Nadia in her statement, Tuesday, March 8.

When the transmission rate gets lower, said Nadia, the daily recording of COVID-19 cases also decreases. As of March 7, the daily cases were 21,380. This figure is higher than the previous day, March 6, which was 24,867 cases.

Then, national hospital occupancy decreased to 28 percent compared to the previous day which was in the 29 percent position.

Although several pandemic control indicators consistently continue to show positive results, Nadia reminded the public not to be negligent.

"We must remain vigilant and be more careful so that there is no spike in cases. The discipline of health protocols must continue to be carried out and the rate of vaccination with two doses and boosters must continue to be accelerated", he said.

As of March 7, COVID-19 vaccination dose 1 has been given to 192,134,689 (92.25 percent) of the population. Then the second dose of vaccination has been given to 148,347,458 (71.23 percent) of the population. Vaccination doses of 3 or booster have been given to 12,698,131 (6.10 percent) of the population.