Covid-19 cases have been increasing recently. The peak is predicted to occur at the end of this year. However, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said that the increase in Covid-19 cases in Indonesia has reached its peak.
This was said by BGS, Budi Gunadi Sadikin’s nickname, when met at the Presidential Palace, Jakarta, Thursday (1/12/2022).
“Covid-19 cases are on the rise, but our observations have reached the peak,” he said.
According to BGS, there is the main reason behind this. The main thing is related to the positivity rate (PR).
“When cases go up, the PR goes up to 10-20, it goes up 100%, another month from 20-30 it goes up but only 50% right. Later from 30 to 35 it’s sloping still high, there’s still an increase in cases but it’s already sloping. As soon as it drops from 35 to 30, it’s a sign that the peak is reached, which we can see from the PR rate,” BGS explained.
“Why do we say PR? Because our test is under testing, not everyone is tested or if they are tested they don’t report. But PR, if the test looks a little high PR, that’s why we see from that number. So now our PR is down throughout Indonesia and big provinces should go down for a week or two. Scientifically this is down because of the portfolio of new variants,” he continued.
On the same occasion, BGS said that the population of the Omicron XBB and BQ.1 subvariants made up 80% of the cases.
“They have already taken over BA.4 and BA.5. That is a characteristic that they are saturated and will go down. That’s why we are different, predicting ups and downs based on PR data empirically. We look back and genomic variant data in one week and two weeks. Whether it will go down,” said BGS.
Furthermore, the former deputy minister of BUMN said that currently the number of patients admitted to the hospital is still a large number who have not received booster vaccines. In detail, 74% of patients had not had a booster, and 84% of those who died had not had a booster either.
“As many as 50% of those who died had not been vaccinated at all. So now you can see people who have not been vaccinated and haven’t been vaccinated yet,” said BGS.
“Those who are not at risk and die are high because 50% of those who die are people who have not been vaccinated. If you have relatives, mothers, fathers, grandfathers, get vaccinated quickly because they are at high risk,” he continued.
