Ministry Of Health Says There Have Been 324 Indonesian Children Exposed To Omicron

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JAKARTA - Director of Prevention and Control of Directly Infectious Diseases of the Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, said hundreds of children in Indonesia had been exposed to COVID-19, the Omicron variant.

"The number of children under the age of 18 who were exposed to Omicron was 324 people", said Nadia in a short message, Thursday, January 3.

Meanwhile, in total there have been 3,161 Omicron cases in Indonesia, with details of 1,661 foreign travel agents (PPLN), 1,247 cases of local transmission, and 253 in epidemiological investigations.

"Currently, there are 1,149 cases of Omicron that have been declared cured", said Nadia.

Along with the spread of Omicron, the trend of adding daily cases of COVID-19 is currently increasing. In the past month, this week's cases of COVID-19 rose 40 times from the first week of January 2022

The positivity rate throughout Indonesia this week also rose to 3.65 percent. The spike in case records was indeed caused by the spread of the Omicron variant. However, that's not the only reason. Nadia said the spike in COVID-19 was also influenced by the increase in the number of COVID-19 examinations or testing.

"It's true that there has been an increase in the positivity rate in the last week. This is not only in line with the increase in confirmed cases but also in line with the increase in the number of testing and tracing", she said.

Nadia said the number of people who were tested weekly as of January 30 was 5.75 per 1,000 population per week. This means that this figure is far above the WHO recommendation of 1 per 1,000 population per week.

The increase in the quota for testing and tracing, continued Nadia, is a form of early detection efforts in preventing the expansion of transmission, as well as preventing the emergence of new distribution clusters.

"This is also an effort to detect early symptoms of COVID-19 suffered by each individual. This is important to prevent delays in handling cases considering the Omicron variant which has a faster spread but tends to be asymptomatic", she explained.