Jakarta. New confirmed cases of coronavirus infection in Indonesia have been consistently high by averaging 535 in the last seven days until Monday, more than double the daily average of 231 cases since the first cases were identified on March 2. 

Confirmed Covid-19 cases in the past week account for 20.8 percent of the total tally.

The country now has 18,010 confirmed cases, 496 more from a day earlier. The total figure includes 1,191 deaths, which also showed a worrying trend. 

The National Covid-19 Task Force reported 43 deaths from coronavirus-related diseases on Monday, slightly down from 59 in the previous day. It’s the first time the country saw more than 100 deaths from the disease within a 48-hour period.

East Java is increasingly becoming the new epicenter of the Indonesian outbreak with 144 new cases and 15 deaths on Monday. The province has a total of 2,296 cases and widens the gap from West Java (1,677), from which it overtook the second position of most-affected provinces last week.

Cases in East Java began to surge after a new cluster was detected at a cigarette factory in Rungkut, near the provincial capital of Surabaya, in late April.

Two workers at the factory have died from confirmed Covid-19 infections, prompting the local government to conduct rapid screening for the disease on over 500 workers. The factory has since been shut temporarily.

Jakarta remains the hardest hit by the outbreak with 6,059 cases, or 33.6 percent of the national tally, and 463 deaths.

Central Java ranked fourth with 1,165 cases and 70 deaths. South Sulawesi is the only province outside Java to join the top five, now has 1,017 cases and 55 deaths.

The remaining 29 provinces have less than 1,000 confirmed cases each.

Revised Data on Probable Cases

The task force has changed the method in reporting probable cases by excluding those who have undergone swab testing, drastically reducing the number.

As a result, the number of probable cases at hospitals dropped to 11,422 from 35,800 on Sunday. The number of persons under surveillance for suspected Covid-19 also fell sharply to 45,047 from 270,876.

“We renew the way we update probable cases. We only report all probable cases across Indonesia based on the latest actual figure,” task force spokesman Achmad Yurianto said in a video conference in Jakarta.

Previously, the task force reported data on probable cases accumulatively without reducing the figure by the number of those who have tested for the virus.