"It is now only a week after the holiday. We will wait for the next 20-25 days to see the case development or a pattern of increased cases similar to the previous year's Christmas and Eid holidays," Sadikin noted in a virtual press conference on Monday.
He later remarked that the situation of confirmed cases of COVID-19 had decreased. The government has, so far, reached the phase of careful monitoring.
The Health Ministry is conducting monitoring since new variants might emerge during the spike in the number of cases.
"Some countries with rising cases, such as Taiwan and the United States, have the Omicron BA.2 variant, which is also widely spreading in Indonesia," he added.
Sadikin stated that in other countries, such as the United Kingdom (UK) and India, the BA.2 variant was already dominating. However, the number of cases had not been increasing rapidly as in Indonesia.
"One country in South Africa has a slight increase, and there are new variants of BA.4 and BA.5, but since the increase is still small and the number is not large, we continue to monitor with the WHO regarding this new variant," he remarked.
Sadikin noted that his ministry was also monitoring the development of COVID-19 cases after the 2022 Eid al-Fitr. Based on monitoring after the long holiday, the increase will start to occur during the period from the 27th to 34th days after the holiday.
According to the report from the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, the Java-Bali Community Mobility Restriction (PPKM), which took effect three weeks ago, showed no area with Level 4 of PPKM being enforced. There were only two districts and cities at level 3, some 97 districts and cities with level 2, and some 29 districts and cities with level 1.
The PPKM outside Java-Bali, which took effect two weeks ago, showed the number of regions at level 1 had increased from the previous 84 regions to 131 regions. Meanwhile, the number of regions at level 2 fell, from 259 to 216 regions.
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Translator: Andi Firdaus, Resinta S
Editor: Sri Haryati
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