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Indonesia records first Omicron community transmission
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Taking off: International flight passengers queue for check-in at Terminal 3 of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, on Sept. 12. Airport authorities have been screening passengers to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
(Antara/Fauzan)
I
ndonesia reported on Tuesday its first community transmission of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, raising concerns over the possibility of another wave of infections following the year-end holidays.
Health Ministry spokesperson Siti Nadia Tarmizi said the new case was a 37-year-old man from Medan, North Sumatra, who has been in Jakarta with his wife since Dec. 6.
"The patient found out that he had been infected with COVID-19 on Dec. 19 when he took a rapid antigen test as a requirement to buy an air ticket back to Medan. This was then confirmed through a PCR [polymerase chain reaction] test," she said in a press conference on Tuesday.
The swab sample of the person was then sent to a ministry lab for whole-genome sequencing, and authorities discovered that he had contracted the Omicron variant on Sunday, according to Nadia.
The source of the infection remains unclear, as the patient had not traveled overseas recently and has no links to any returned travelers.
The patient was recently admitted to Sulianti Saroso Infectious Diseases Hospital (RSPI) in North Jakarta, where he will be undergoing quarantine for the next two weeks.
"Although the patient was asymptomatic, we took him to the RSPI so that doctors could monitor his health condition better and could study the development of the Omicron variant [in the patient's body] more closely," Nadia said.
