JAKARTA - Vice President Ma'ruf Amin asked the public to remain vigilant about the latest type of COVID-19 virus, namely the Omicron XBB variant.
This was conveyed by Ma'ruf after attending the 2022 National Santri Day Commemoration at the An-Nawawi Tanara Islamic Boarding School, Serang Regency, Banten, Friday, October 28.
"We have maintained the current conditions, the public still has to wear masks and be careful," said Vice President Ma'ruf Amin as quoted by Antara, Friday, October 28.
Until now, the government has not changed the status of the pandemic to endemic.
"Because we are still observing while also waiting for further clues from WHO. One of them is the new variant, and the Ministry of Health is reviewing and how much is dangerous than the new variant," said Ma'ruf.
With high caution, people are still asked to carry out their daily activities in order to keep the socio-economic wheels turning.
"Be careful but don't disturb people's mobilization, don't let the economy be disturbed," said Ma'ruf.
Previously, the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) said as many as 24 countries had reported the discovery of COVID-19 cases with the XBB variant including Australia, Malaysia, India, Singapore and the UK.
In Indonesia alone, at least four cases have been found with the XBB variant, namely three cases from DKI Jakarta and one case from East Java.
As of Friday, 3,015 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in Indonesia, bringing the total positive cases to 6,484,764 cases, with 22,743 active cases, while recovered cases increased by 1,783 cases so that the total recovered reached 6,303,477 cases.
As many as 22 patients died, bringing the total death toll to 158,544 patients since the pandemic hit in March 2020.
As for the vaccinations carried out, the government has injected the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Indonesia in the amount of 205,125,007 doses, the second dose that has been injected is 171,852,490 doses.
It is known that this XBB variant spreads 0.79 times faster than the BA.5 and 0.46 times the BA.2 waves.
However, the symptoms of the XBB variant are the same as other Omicron variants. In fact, if you look at the fatality rate, the XBB variant is lower than other Omicron variants.
According to the US Centers for Disease Prevention (CDC), symptoms of the XBB variant include fever, feeling cold, coughing, fatigue, muscle aches, headaches, throat pain, nasal congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, diarrhea and shortness of breath.
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