Jakarta. Indonesia is heading into yet another toughest month in its fight against the coronavirus outbreak, with new cases already passing the 10,000 mark since the start the month.

At this period of time last month, the country recorded only around 8,500 cases.

New confirmed cases of the virus rose by 1,882 on Thursday, taking the country’s total to 118,753 as surge in cases returned in Jakarta and East Java.

President Joko Widodo issued an executive order earlier this week calling on regional governments to issue regulations that make the wearing of mask mandatory during the pandemic.

People who go into public should wear masks covering their nose, mouth and chin area, according to the executive order that provides basic guidelines for the drafting of regulations in the respective region.

Jakarta returned as the main driver of the national daily total with 556 new cases, its second highest daily rise since the outbreak, for a total of 23,936 cases, including 901 deaths. Jakarta’s previous high was 577 cases on July 29.

After leading the national tally for three consecutive days, East Java saw its daily cases down to 286, bringing its total number of confirmed cases to 24,115, more than any other provinces.

The gap in the number of cases between East Java and Jakarta has been reduced to 179, the narrowest in over a month.

However, East Java has twice the number of Covid-19 deaths than Jakarta, with a total of 1,817 deaths, 18 more from yesterday.

Central Java registered 115 new cases for a total of 10,151 and reported 20 Covid-19 deaths, the highest on Thursday, to take its total death toll to 700.

South Sulawesi became the fourth province to have accumulated more than 10,000 cases since the outbreak began, after reporting 182 new cases. It now returns to the top three of provinces with the highest number of confirmed cases.

The remaining provinces didn’t report a three-digit rise in the day.

The number of Covid-19 patients recovering from the disease has increased by 1,756 in the last 40 hours for a total of 75,645, or 63.7 percent of the total cases.

Indonesia has recorded a total of 5,521 Covid-19 deaths as of Thursday, an increase by 69 from a day earlier. The proportion of deaths to confirmed cases stood at 4.6 percent, remains above the global average.