By: Saladin Al Ayubi)*
After the Eid holiday we will be faced with school holidays, where the holiday moment is a moment that is often accompanied by an increase in positive cases of COVID-19. The public is also asked to be vigilant and remain obedient to the Health Protocol (Prokes).
Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani is also wary of the surge in Covid-19 cases. Because soon there will be a school holiday which has the potential to trigger an increase in Covid-19 cases.
On the previous occasion, Head of the Data and Information Technology Sub-Sector of the Covid-19 Handling Task Force (STPC-19) Dewi Nuraisyah said there was an increasing trend of positive cases of Covid-19 in the last six days.
Dewi said, on May 22, 2021, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 was at 91,240 or around 5.15 percent, down 48.4 percent from the peak. In the last six days we can already see an upward trend.
In a coordination meeting on the topic of ‘prevention and anticipation of a spike in cases after Eid al-Fitr’, he said that if it usually declines, this has increased in the past week by 440 active cases in the last six days.
Then related to the death rate, currently the death rate due to Covid-19 in Indonesia has reached 2.8 percent, then today it has dropped 2.78 percent. However, this figure is still quite high because previously Indonesia still had a target if it could continue to be lowered well below 2.78 percent.
As for the current cure rate at 92.06 percent, it is still moving up. Then, the number of specimen examinations as conveyed last week saw a decline in the possibility that laboratory operations were limited during long holidays.
But later this week there was an increase again so that the average comparison of the number of specimens examined in May and April was not too much different, which was approximately 62,000 specimens examined every day.
On a different occasion, Minister of Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi reminded all parties to be aware of the trend of increasing Covid-19 cases globally, including in the Southeast Asia region which experienced the highest spike in new cases of up to 19 percent from April 25 to May 2 2021.
Retno also explained that the Southeast Asia region which in WHO terminology consists of India, Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Maldives, Timor Leste, Myanmar, Bhutan, experienced the highest increase in cases, which was 19 percent seen from a week to 2 weeks. May 2021.
According to WHO, the increase in global Covid-19 cases within one week from April 25 to May 2 2021 reached 5.7 cases per week or higher than the number of cases in the first six months of the pandemic.
He said that based on this latest case development, the increase in cases in the Southeast Asia region reached 47 percent of the world’s new cases.
In order to prevent the higher rate of transmission of Covid-19, Retno reminded all parties not to be careless and continue to apply health protocols. This discipline must be applied in order to reduce the number of transmission of Covid-19.
He also said that support from every level of society was still needed to protect themselves and the environment from Covid-19. Community support can be done through the success of the vaccination program and still complying with health protocols.
Meanwhile, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) gave several warnings regarding the spread of Covid-19 in Indonesia. Jokowi asked regional heads to remain vigilant about Covid-19 cases after Eid.
Jokowi advised the possibility of a potential increase in positive cases of Covid-19 after the Eid holiday and the 2021 homecoming period. This is because there are around 1.5 million people who are still desperate to return to their hometowns, even though it has been banned.
Jokowi also said that there were 15 provinces recorded to experience a spike in positive cases of Covid-19.
Of the 15 provinces, six of them are from the island of Sumatra. The six regions experiencing a spike in Covid-19 cases are; Aceh, North Sumatra, West Sumatra, Riau, Jambi and Bagka Belitung.
This shows that we must be aware of the increase in positive confirmed cases of Covid-19, especially in neighboring countries, there has been a drastic spike in cases.
)* The author is a contributor to the Press Circle and Cikini Students
