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COVID-19 third wave takes hold in Jakarta
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People queue for a free rapid test for the COVID-19 coronavirus sponsored by the Indonesian National Police in Jakarta on June 21, 2020. (AFP/Adek Berry).
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third wave of the coronavirus pandemic has begun to take hold across the country, with the Omicron variant of the virus believed to have driven a surge in cases and hospitalization in the capital, where more than 80 percent of the population has been vaccinated.
On Thursday, the country saw 8,077 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, the highest official daily caseload since August last year when the country was struggling to contain the Delta-induced second wave, which peaked at 56,757 cases a month earlier.
While studies have shown that Omicron is less virulent than its predecessors, experts have warned that the high transmissibility of the variant could lead to a spike in cases that could disastrously overwhelm the healthcare system.
Jakarta has seen an increase in hospitalization as cases begin to soar again, triggering calls for the government to tighten curbs and put a break on in-person education.
The capital’s COVID-19 bed occupancy rate (BOR) increased from 8 percent on Jan. 3 to 38 percent on Wednesday, according to the Health Ministry’s website. As the only province with a two-digit BOR, Jakarta has once again become the epicenter of the pandemic. The BOR at hospitals nationwide stood at 10 percent on Wednesday.
Despite its high vaccination rate, Jakarta has seen its number of active COVID-19 cases triple in the past week from 4,300 cases on Jan. 18 to 14,000 on Wednesday, with its daily cases increasing from 670 to 1,886 within the same period.
In recent days, new COVID-19 clusters have begun emerging in the capital, bringing back the collective memory of the early days of the first and second waves.
