Indonesia has recorded another record daily case number as the national task force confirmed 3,861 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday, bringing the national total to 207,203.
The task force also announced 120 deaths due to the illness and 2,310 recovered patients, making for a cumulative 8,456 fatalities and 147,510 recoveries from COVID-19 so far.
Based on the official figures, Indonesia is the country with the second-highest COVID-19 case number in Southeast Asia, just below the Philippines, which reported a total of 248,947 cases on Thursday, according to the worldometer.info website. Indonesia ranks 23rd in the world.
However, experts have pointed out that many cases in Indonesia remain undiscovered because of the country’s relatively low number of tests.
As the initial epicenter of the outbreak, the capital city of Jakarta recorded again the highest number of new confirmed cases with 1,274, followed by East Java with 381, Central Java with 375, West Java with 335 and Riau with 194 cases.
West Java reported the highest number of new deaths with 42, trailed by Central Java with 18, Jakarta with 17, Bali with 9 and South Kalimantan 6.
Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan decided on Wednesday to “pull the emergency brake” and announced that the capital would reinforce a partial lockdown, or large-scale social restrictions (PSBB), after the rules had been eased in early June to gradually reopen the economy.
The decision to reinstate the PSBB was made after the capital saw coronavirus case spike, repeatedly recording record-high daily increases in August, with the isolation bed occupancy rate reaching 77 percent as of September.
