Indonesia reports highest number of daily Covid-19 cases since late January; 12, 990 cases on Friday (June 18) - The Star Online

JAKARTA, June 18 (Xinhua/AP): Indonesia on Friday recorded 12, 990 newly-confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, marking the highest daily spike since late January and bringing the total tally to 1, 963, 266, the Health Ministry said.

The Covid-19 related death toll added by 290 to 54, 043, the ministry reported.

During the time, 7, 907 recovered patients were discharged from hospitals, bringing the total number of recoveries from the pandemic in the Southeast Asian country to 1, 779, 127.

The coronavirus has spread to all the country’s 34 provinces.

Specifically, in the past 24 hours, Jakarta recorded 4, 737 newly-confirmed cases, West Java 2, 791, Central Java 1, 331, East Java 731 and Yogyakarta 592.

No new cases were detected in Maluku province.

Meanwhile, Indonesia’s president ordered authorities to speed up the country’s vaccination campaign as the World Health Organisation warned Thursday (June 17) of the need to increase social restrictions in the country amid a fresh surge of coronavirus infections caused by worrisome variants.

“We need vaccination acceleration in order to achieve communal immunity, which we hope can stop the Covid-19 spread, ” President Joko Widodo said in a remarks while visiting a vaccination center just outside the capital, Jakarta.

Widodo said he ordered his cabinet ministers and local governments to increase the number of people vaccinated each day to 1 million by next month. He said Indonesia is currently vaccinating half a million people a day.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, aims to inoculate more than 181 million of its 270 million people by March 2022, but authorities have only fully vaccinated 11.8 million people and partially vaccinated another 9.6 million others.

National Covid-19 task force spokesman Wiku Adisasmito said the slow progress can be put down to limited global vaccine supply, the unpreparedness of the national health system and vaccine hesitancy. The government has received 92.2 million vaccine doses so far.

Indonesia saw its number of confirmed new cases climb to more than 12, 600 on Thursday, an increase blamed on travel during last month’s Aidilfitri holiday as well as the arrival of new virus variants, such as the the Delta version first found in India.

In Jakarta the number of hospital beds occupied has shot up to 75% this week from 45% last week, government data shows. – Xinhua/AP