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Jakarta in ‘critical phase’ as COVID-19 cases surge
The Jakarta administration appears to remain confident in its approach to handling COVID-19 even as it sees a frightening resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the past week, instead blaming the general population for being lax with health protocols.
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Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan (center) gives a speech during the launch of Jakarta Bermasker (Jakarta Wearing Mask) logo at the Jakarta Police headquarters on Feb. 3, 2021. Jakarta is currently seeing a resurgence in COVID-19 cases following the recent discovery that new strains of the virus have spread throughout the country. (Antara/M. Risyal Hidayat)
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akarta has seen an alarming resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the past week, with officials and experts saying that the capital is now in a “critical phase” and could see a higher spike than the last wave of infections in January.
On Sunday, Jakarta recorded some 2,700 new confirmed cases – the highest since February, when the capital saw a surge of infections following the year-end holidays.
The city's positivity rate, which is the percentage of positive results from all tests conducted, increased by 8 percent to 17 percent in the past week. With Jakarta health authorities having recently doubled the city's testing rate to around 75,000 people daily on a seven-day average – almost eight times the minimum rate that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends – the high positivity rate indicates that virus transmission has significantly increased among the population.
Active cases in Jakarta have also increased by 50 percent in the past week from 11,500 to 17,400 cases, causing hospital beds to fill up fast with COVID-19 patients. Within a one-week period, the bed occupancy rate (BOR) in Jakarta increased from 45 to 75 percent.
The BOR at the emergency COVID-19 hospital set up in the former athletes village in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, reached 83 percent on Monday, with 5,028 out of its 5,994 beds being occupied.
Read also: Indonesia faces post-Idul Fitri COVID-19 surge from Central Java, East Java
The hospital's coordinator for health workers, Lt. Col. M. Arifin, said capacity was being expanded to meet demand.
