COVID-19 Patients In Indonesia Add 5,085 Cases, But This Epidemiologist Believes The Number Is Much Bigger

Illustration of health workers (Photo by Amir Arabshahi on Unsplash)

JAKARTA - July 19, 2022, Indonesia received an additional 5,085 people who were confirmed positive for COVID-19. However, the numbers on the ground are believed to be much higher.

Epidemiologist from Griffith University Dicky Budiman believes the daily number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia is far greater than the figure reported today, which was 5,085 cases.

"Five thousands of cases have not met all of them. This case is much bigger than today's report," said Dicky Budiman who was confirmed in Jakarta, Tuesday, July 19 evening.

5,085 daily confirmed cases as of Tuesday at 12.00 WIB is not a strange situation, considering that the Omicron BA.4 and BA.2.75 subvariants in Indonesia have relatively fast spread characteristics.

In fact, said Dicky, the variant in several countries was reported to be able to reinfect humans much faster than the previous variant.

This daily case of COVID-19 is the first time the highest since March 24, 2022. Active cases have also crossed 30,000 patients, after the addition of 2,000 cases.

According to Dicky, the current effort that can be done is to prevent Omicron subvariant infection from afflicting high-risk community groups such as the elderly or those with comorbidities, even those who have not received a booster.

"The current effort is not to wait for an explosion of cases, especially pursuing coverage of three doses of vaccination. This is homework that must be immediately pursued," he said as quoted by Antara.

Separately, the Chair of the Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) COVID-19 Task Force, Prof. Zubairi Djoerban, said that today's increase in cases did not need to raise the level of Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM) in the regions.

"I don't think it's necessary to raise the PPKM level, even though there are an additional 5,085 new cases," he said.

Zubairi said that the effort that needs to be done is to tighten health protocols in public facilities during activities.

"But that doesn't mean you sit on the bus or train without coughing and without a mask. We still need to be careful, take care of each other, and don't get carried away while praying that a big wave doesn't come," he said.

The Task Force for Handling COVID-19 reported that there were 5,085 positive cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia on Tuesday (19/7), bringing the total to 6,143,431.

The most additional positive cases of COVID-19 came from DKI Jakarta, namely 2,485 people, West Java 971 people, Banten 649 people, East Java 344 people, Bali 167 people, and Central Java 92 people.

Active cases in Indonesia experienced an additional 2,483 people bringing the total number to 30,989 people.

The task force also reported that 6,355 people were suspected of being COVID-19, and 127,033 specimens had been examined as of today.

Meanwhile, the number of recovered COVID-19 cases in Indonesia increased by 2,596 people, bringing the total to 5,955,577. Nationally, there have been six deaths from COVID-19 in Indonesia, bringing the total to 156,865 so far.