Active Covid-19 Cases Fall to Below 100,000

Jakarta. The total number of active Covid-19 cases has dropped further to fewer than 100,000 for the first time in the last three months, according to government figures released on Monday, in another sign that Indonesia is past the peak of the Delta variant outbreak.

At its peak in mid-July, the country recorded over 580,000 active cases and saw its health system overwhelmed with hospital bed occupancy rates surpassing 80 percent.

It resulted in a dramatic surge in fatalities due to many Covid-19 patients being turned away by overloaded hospitals and forced to self-isolate at their homes without proper medical treatment.

As the health crisis worsened attributed to the highly contagious Delta variant, the country’s biggest makeshift Covid-19 hospital in Jakarta reached capacity, as did other government isolation facilities in several cities. 

Most cities, especially those outside of Java and Bali, had no such facility, prompting the government to deploy five large ferries as floating Covid-19 hospitals last month. 

Between July 16 and August 22, the daily Covid-19 death toll continued to exceed 1,000, making Indonesia the deadliest place of the global pandemic at that stage of the outbreak.

But on Monday, it recorded just 2,577 cases, the lowest daily tally since May 16. 

The daily death toll has been under the 1,000 mark for 18 days in a row, including another 276 Covid-19 deaths on Monday.

Overall, the country has recorded 4.17 million Covid-19 cases and 139,165 deaths since the pandemic began.

With figures returning to the pre-Delta variant levels and showing a steady decline, the government decided to lift the highest Covid-19 alert level from all 34 provinces, although nine cities and districts will remain under the level four.

They nine include Cirebon, Purwakarta, Brebes, Banda Aceh, Bangka, Medan, Kota Baru, Palangkaraya and Palu.

“There is a significant progress at the national level and it keeps improving, as demonstrated by a 93.9 percent drop in new cases compared to its peak,” Chief Investment Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said in a news conference.

“More importantly, we saw today that the total number of active cases had dropped to below 100,000.”

Of the 208 million target population, 20.3 percent have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to Health Ministry’s vaccination dashboard. Nearly 74 million citizens have received at least a dose of the vaccine.

In addition, nearly 800,000 health workers have received a booster dose and 1.79 million have taken double doses of the vaccine. The government initially targeted to inoculate 1.5 million registered medical workers.