Jakarta
Jakarta officially extended its COVID-19 social restrictions by 14 days on Thursday evening, amid an unabated threat of transmission that has led experts to demand better containment efforts and stricter punishments for violations of health protocols. The city administration has met the World Health Organization’s requirement for the minimum daily number of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and says it is confident in its services and health facilities, even though Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan recently said that the city’s infection data suggested that cases were still on the rise. “The effective reproduction number [Rt] has increased. We had, for a while, been below 1. The figure stands at 1.15 as of Monday, [...] which indicates an acceleration in COVID-19 transmission,” Anies said during a press conference on Thursday evening. ...