COVID-19 Has Rise 40 Times In The Last Month, Is It Time For PPKM To Level Up?

JAKARTA - The increase in COVID-19 cases has begun to show a quite drastic increase. In the past month, there has been a 40-fold increase in COVID-19 cases since the beginning of this year.

Early last January, weekly positive cases still increased slowly from 1,400 cases, then 3,000 cases the following week, then 5,400 cases, 14 thousand cases, until this week cases experienced a spike to 56 thousand cases in one week.

"Currently, positive cases of COVID-19 are increasing. The increase is quite sharp and in a short time, it is quite large and many times. This number has increased 40 times compared to early January," said Wiku in a virtual press conference, Wednesday, 2 January.

In fact, said Wiku, as of February 1, the daily cases had reached 16,021 cases. Meanwhile, today the cases increased by 17,859 cases. This figure is higher than the daily addition in the first wave of December 2020.

Wiku said that this increase in cases made the daily positivity rate of antigen and PCR examinations to have reached 6 or was above the WHO standard.

"Previously, our daily positivity rate was consistently at 0 to 2. Of course, this increase in audit cases should be a warning for all of us to reflect on our discipline towards health protocols," he explained.

So, does this indicate that the third wave of COVID-19 cases has begun? Wiku said not necessarily. The government, said Wiku, still needs to monitor the rising trend of COVID-19, such as the spike in cases of the Delta variant in mid-2021.

"Currently, there has been an increase in daily confirmation cases in the past week. However, we still need time to monitor this trend when compared to the second wave ago," said Wiku.

However, the government has predicted a surge in COVID-19 cases along with the current spread of Omicron, which will reach a peak of around 150,000 cases per day. This figure is three times higher than the peak cases of the spread of the Delta variant.

This was conveyed by the Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin in the PPKM evaluation on January 31 last.

"We still don't know how many peaks will occur in Indonesia, which we estimate will occur at the end of February. But we have said that in other countries it can be three to six times compared to the peak of Delta where the peak of Delta in Indonesia is 57,000 cases per day, " said Budi.

Reflecting on a number of countries, positive cases due to this variant are higher than the Delta variant. Budi revealed data in various countries about the Omicron variant. In the United States, said Budi, the peak of the spread of the variant resulted in 800,000 people being tested positive every day.

"In the United States, we see their peak at 800,000 cases per day compared to Delta of 250,000 cases per day. In France, we see the peak is still rising at 360,000 cases per day compared to Delta of 60 thousand per day," he said.

"A country similar to ours, Brazil, is still rising at around 190,000 per day compared to the peak of Delta at 80,000 per day," he added.