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New COVID-19 cases on the rise
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Low-income people line up for healthy food packages jointly provided by the local administration and the Indonesian Military (TNI) in the Central Java regency of Tegal on July 26. (Antara/Oky Lukmansyah)
H
ealth authorities reported 4,951 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday, the highest daily rise since August, following the detection of the country’s first local transmissions of the new XBB strain of the Omicron variant.
The caseload on Thursday was more than double the 2,457 new cases recorded on Monday, and brought the total number of current active cases to 30,080. The country recorded 4,873 and 4,707 new cases on Wednesday and Tuesday, respectively.
There were also 42 deaths within the past 24 hours.
The archipelago has seen rising new cases across 24 provinces over the past week, with Jakarta recording the highest single-day jump with 1,823 additional cases, followed by West Java with 694 cases, East Java 681 cases, Banten 394 and Central Java with a total of 382 new cases.
The first confirmed case caused by the XBB subvariant was detected on Oct. 22 in a 29-year-old woman who lives in Surabaya, East Java, and had a history of travel to Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara.
The confirmed case of the XBB subvariant comes at a time when a number of people are facing difficulties getting inoculated as vaccination centers impose quotas on the number of jabs given, local media reported. Some centers have even shut down temporarily.
XBB is said to be the most antibody-evasive subvariant to date, although there is no evidence that it can cause more severe illness in people who have immunity from a previous infection or vaccines.
