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Jokowi urges calm as Indonesia reports first Omicron case
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A local resident receives her second Sinopharm jab during a vaccination program at Badung market in Bali on Oct. 12, 2021. (Antara/Nyoman Hendra Wibowo)
P
resident Joko "Jokowi" Widodo urged the public to remain calm and to maintain discipline in following health protocols after Indonesia discovered its first confirmed COVID-19 case caused by the emerging Omicron variant on Thursday.
The country has been on alert for the past few weeks as the new variant continues to spread across the globe at an unprecedented rate, with almost 80 countries having detected cases of Omicron, including neighboring Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.
The science remains inconclusive but early data suggest the variant is more transmissible than Delta, which wreaked havoc in Indonesia in July and caused the national healthcare system to overload.
Jokowi said the arrival of the Omicron variant in the country was "inevitable" and called on the public to work together to slow down and contain the spread as much as possible.
"Now that we have discovered Omicron, we should try our best to prevent it from spreading widely in Indonesia. We don't want to see any community transmissions happening," Jokowi said in a press conference on Thursday.
“It's important to be on alert but we should not panic because so far Omicron has not shown any characteristics that could endanger patients, especially those who have been vaccinated," he said.
Read also: Government urges people not to travel abroad as goal of reaching endemic status in sight
