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View all search resultsJakarta ‘in critical phase’ as COVID-19 cases surge
Officials locked in blame game despite early warning signs
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akarta has seen an alarming resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the past week, with officials and experts saying that the capital is now in a “critical phase” and could see a higher spike than the last wave of infections in January
On Sunday, Jakarta recorded some 2,700 new confirmed cases – the highest since February, when the capital saw a surge of infections following the year-end holidays.
The city's positivity rate, which is the percentage of positive results from all tests conducted, increased by 8 percent to 17 percent in the past week. With Jakarta health authorities having recently doubled the city's testing rate to around 75,000 people daily on a seven-day average – almost eight times the minimum rate that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends – the high positivity rate indicates that virus transmission has significantly increased among the population.
Active cases in Jakarta have also increased by 50 percent in the past week from 11,500 to 17,400 cases, causing hospital beds to fill up fast with COVID-19 patients. Within a one-week period, the bed occupancy rate (BOR) in Jakarta increased from 45 to 75 percent.
The BOR at the emergency COVID-19 hospital set up in the former athletes village in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, reached 83 percent on Monday, with 5,028 out of its 5,994 beds being occupied.
The hospital's coordinator for health workers, Lt. Col. M. Arifin, said capacity was being expanded to meet demand.
“We have prepared 2,000 more beds to anticipate the surge in patients. Usually one room has two beds but if necessary we'll put three beds in a room,” he said on Saturday, as quoted by Kompas.com.
