Acting Mayor of Bandung City Yana Mulyana remarked that currently, six Bandung residents had tested positive for the new variant of COVID-19, Omicron. To this end, Mulyana deemed it necessary to take anticipatory measures as the variant transmitted quickly among people.
"I will urge the Health Office (of Bandung) to conduct random testing again at schools that implement face-to-face learning," Mulyana noted here, on Thursday.
The acting mayor confirmed that the six residents of Bandung are suspected to have contracted the virus from local transmission since they had no history of traveling abroad.
The six residents of Bandung were confirmed to have contracted the Omicron variant based on results of the Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) test conducted by the Regional Health Laboratory of West Java.
To this end, he noted that the variant had currently been proven to exist among members of the community. Even so, he urged the residents to not panic about the variant though remain vigilant and follow the health protocols.
Apart from conducting random testing at schools, Mulyana asserted that he will again tighten the working system of the state civil apparatuses in the Bandung city government.
According to Mulyana, the number of state civil apparatuses working in the office will be reduced by 25 percent. Thus, only 75 percent of them will work from office, while the rest will be urged to work from home.
"Maybe this may be applied by next week since we have to prepare the internal regulations first," he stated.
The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Indonesia in March 2020. According to data provided by the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, as of January 19, 2022, at least 4,275,528 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the country, while 4,120,540 people have recovered and 144,192 people have succumbed to the virus.
On December 15, 2021, the Health Ministry found the first Omicron case in Indonesia. As of January 20, 2022, the ministry had recorded as many as 882 Omicron cases in the country.
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Translator: Bagus Ahmad, Raka Adji
Editor: Sri Haryati
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