It Turns Out That The Transmission Of COVID-19 Mutations In Indonesia Is More Aggressive Than The Government Thought

Deputy Health Minister Dante Saksono Harbuwono (Screenshot via ANTARA)

JAKARTA - Dozens of cases of mutation of the COVID-19 virus have entered Indonesia. Deputy Health Minister Dante Saksono Harbuwono said the transmission rate of the new variant of the virus was actually faster than the government's estimate.

Dante took the example of the transmission of the COVID-19 B1617 mutation which infected 14 Indonesian Indonesian crew members (ABK) from the Philippines who entered Indonesia. They contracted the new corona variant because it had previously landed in Indonesia.

"In Cilacap there is a Philippine ship that docked. The previous ship had landed in India. Then from 20 crew members, we carried out a genomic screening examination, apparently, there were 14 cases of mutations", said Dante in a joint working meeting with Commission IX of the House of Representatives (DPR), Thursday, May 27.

Of the 14 cases of this mutation, it turned out that they transmitted the coronavirus to 31 health workers. In fact, these health workers are already wearing personal protective equipment (PPE).

Health workers who have been infected have again been subjected to contact tracing. As a result, there were 12 people who contracted COVID-19, and 6 people were again found infected based on further searches.

Reflecting on this case, Dante revealed how aggressive the transmission of the coronavirus mutation to other people was.

"So, there are 49 cases infected out of 14 cases. This means that the transmission rate is approximately 3.35 times compared to our target. Supposedly, the transmission rate must be less than 0.9 or a maximum of 1 if we want to define cases that are not very contagious", explained Dante.

Overall, there are currently 54 cases of mutation of COVID-19 in Indonesia, starting from B1117 from England, B1617 from India, and B1351 from South Africa.

Of the 54 cases of the new variant of COVID-19 that were found, 35 of them were variants of cases originating from migrants from outside Indonesia. Then, there were 19 cases originating from transmission in Indonesia.

"This means that there has been the spread of local contamination in Indonesia for variants of concern that have occurred mutations. Mutations have occurred in several provinces in Indonesia, both local transmission and import transmission", he concluded.