Indonesian Doctors Association: Deltacron Hasn't Been A Worrying Mutation Yet

PIXABAY ILLUSTRATION

JAKARTA - Head of the COVID-19 Task Force for the Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) Zubairi Djoerban said the COVID-19 variant containing elements of Delta and Omicron (Deltacron) had not become a worrying mutation.

"Deltacron has spread to many other people. However, the number of people with Deltacron is not too many. It has not been our concern and concern," said Zubairi Djoerban while attending the Opening of the Indonesian Doctors Service Monument in Menteng, Jakarta, reported by Antara, Thursday, March 17.

He said Deltacorn is a combination variant of Delta which has the characteristics of causing pain with severe symptoms while Omicron is highly contagious.

The combination of the two, said Zubairi, is very easy to penetrate a person's immune defense and then increase the severity of symptoms when infected. "Fortunately, that's not what happened. It wasn't too widespread and it wasn't very lethal," he said.

Zubairi said the emergence of Daltacron is the nature of the virus to stay alive by using the human body as a host to survive.

"In order to stay alive, the virus enters people's bodies, the virus must stay in the human host that is inserted. Therefore, they mutate because people have been infected (infected)," he said.

He said Deltacron appeared because there was a Delta variant and an Omicron variant. Both then enter the body of a patient, then at the time of mutation, appears recombinant in viral cells. "So there comes Deltacron," he said.

Separately, the Spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, said that until now his party had not detected the emergence of Deltacron in Indonesia.

"Until now, the government has not detected any cases of the Deltacron variant in Indonesia and we will continue to monitor it," he said.

He said the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic is still dominated by the Omicron variant and a number of its subvariants. Until March 15, 2022, there were 668 cases recorded due to transmission of the Omicron BA.2 subvariant in Indonesia. However, the Omicron BA.1 subvariant still dominates in the country.

"In our national data, in general, BA.2 has 668, BA.1 is the most that has caused an increase in cases. Cumulatively, from January to March there were 5,625 cases," he said.