Although It Has Not Been Detected In The Country, The Government Continues To Monitor 3 New Variants Of COVID-19

ILLUSTRA TION / VOI

JAKARTA - Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the government continues to monitor the development of three new variants of COVID-19 in the country.

This monitoring was carried out to prevent the spread of the Delta variant that occurred some time ago, causing a significant increase in the number of patients.

"There are three new variants that are under the government's observation, namely the Lambda or C37 variant. This was first discovered in Peru in December 2020 and now it has spread to 42 countries," Budi said in a press conference broadcast on the Coordinating Ministry of Marves' YouTube, Monday, September 13.

In addition, the government is also focusing on monitoring the Mu or B.1621 variant which was first discovered in Colombia in January 2021 and the C.1.2 variant which was discovered in South Africa in May 2021 and has now spread to nine countries.

"These three variants are currently under research on how they behave, the rate of transmission, and whether they can avoid naturally occurring antibodies or vaccinations," said the former Deputy Minister of State-Owned Enterprises.

However, until now there has been no definitive research results. In addition, Budi also ensured that the three new variants had not yet entered Indonesia.

In the future, the government will continue to strengthen the entrance to the country by completing and tightening the quarantine process for travelers by air, sea and land.

"We are also strengthening the genome sequencing test lab network so that we can quickly identify this new variant. There are already 21 lab networks in Indonesia that can carry out this sophisticated, seshopisticated testing," he said.

From this laboratory network, Budi continued, Indonesia has now been able to perform 1,866 genome sequencing per month.

"So the total that has been carried out from January to August is 6,161 genome sequencing, which when compared to last year, one year ago we only performed 346 genome sequencing," he concluded.