“The figures are logical because the recovery rate is counted from active cases,” Daud said on Friday.

According to the West Java COVID-19 Information and Coordination Center, the province recorded a total of 71,764 confirmed cases, including 59,118 recoveries and 1,093 deaths, as of Friday afternoon. Forty-percent of the cases were identified in November and December.

In November, the data showed that the province saw an addition of 16,179 new cases and 190 fatalities, putting the average in West Java at 539 new cases and six deaths each day.

Meanwhile, within 18 days in December, West Java had recorded 19,247 new cases. Therefore, the province had a daily average of 1,069 new cases and 10 deaths. 

“I see the increase of the new cases as a result of people becoming more mobile,” said Daud.

Read also: West Java to ban crowd-pulling New Year’s Eve celebrations

West Java Health Agency head Berli Hamdani said most infections took place within families, adding that infections were commonly sourced from tourism activities, trips, offices and factories.

West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil previously said the 9,000 cases that were recorded between Dec. 1 and Dec. 13 comprised 4,600 cases from old data published by the Health Ministry. 

Ridwan also said that his administration was working on providing another 15 buildings to be used as isolation centers for treatment of asymptomatic carriers. COVID-19 patients with medium to heavy symptoms will continued to be treated at hospitals.

Earlier this month, Ridwan blamed a spike of 1,648 daily cases in the province on data discrepancies. The governor said that 1,000 of the 1,648 cases reported by the Health Ministry came from outdated data.  

“So we can not call it a surge,” Ridwan said on Dec. 4, adding a similar issue was reported in Central Java. 

Read also: West Java prepares refrigerators, cold storage rooms for vaccine effort

He explained that in order to submit a case report, the regional administration had to pass through two steps, with the first step involving reports on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing and the second involving the submission of all results to the COVID-19 data system, which is connected to the Health Ministry’s server. 

“I saw that Depok had actually uploaded 100 cases, but it failed to submit them. Some [other regions] also reported 100 cases but it came out different when it was announced,” Ridwan said. 

He said he hoped the ministry could improve the data matching system, adding that he opted to use data submitted by cities and regencies for COVID-19 handling in West Java. (adi)

 

Editor’s note: This article is part of a public campaign by the COVID-19 task force to raise people’s awareness about the pandemic.