Jakarta's COVID-19 Cases Rise Again, DKI Provincial Government Urges To Use Masks In Public Transportation

COVID-19 Cases Rise Again, Health Service Advises 4 Doses Of Vaccination. (VOI graphics Team)

Head of the DKI Jakarta Transportation Agency, Syafrin Liputo, appealed to the public to wear masks when using public transportation. Considering that currently the number of COVID-19 cases in Jakarta has increased again. "We hope to take better care of ourselves because it takes quite a long time on the bus, by wearing a mask," Syafrin told reporters, Thursday, December 14. Syafrin said that the appeal to wear masks was expressed because the government had not issued a policy of limiting capacity in public transportation. "Until now there is no limitation on capacity either, everything is still the same. Of course we hope passengers will wear masks while on the bus," said Syafrin. The DKI Jakarta Health Office noted that active cases of COVID-19 in the capital city have now reached 365 cases. Of the active cases as of December 13, 12 cases were treated in hospital ICUs. "As of December 13, 44 COVID-19 patients were being treated at the hospital with 32 cases of moderate symptoms in isolation rooms and 12 cases in the ICU," said Head of the Epidemiological Surveillance and Immunization Section of the DKI Jakarta Health Office, Ngabila Salama in his statement. Ngabila said, there has been an increase in COVID-19 cases in the past month. In fact, new cases over the past week have increased four times from last week. It was recorded that 271 positive cases a week in DKI Jakarta were on December 4-10. Daily cases over the past few days have also shown an increase. "There were 57 new positive cases on December 11, 12 December 127 cases, and 13 December 131 new cases," said Ngabila. The death of this COVID-19 case re-emerged when Indonesia had entered the COVID-19 endemic. Two positive cases who died occurred in December 2023 after previously for 2 consecutive months there were no deaths. The two cases of COVID-19 that died were elderly. One case has a comorbid hypertension. Meanwhile, another case has comorbid stroke and heart failure, and has not been vaccinated against COVID-19 at all.

This time the COVID-19 case was dominated by the EG.5 subvariant. The EG.5 subvariant is a derivative of the Omicron variant and is included in the variant of interest (VOI) category or a variant that has a genetic mutation that is predicted to affect the clinical characteristics of the virus. The characteristics of this subvariant, namely, can lead to an increase in cases and avoid immunity so that it is easier to infect but there is no change in severity.