Heru Andriyanto, Jakarta – The National Covid-19 Task Force reported 529 more confirmed cases on Saturday, taking the country's total to 17,025. The total figure includes 1,089 deaths and 3,911 patients who have recovered from the disease.

The last five days have been very critical when cases increased by at least 480 everyday and led to a share of 16 percent of the total cases in that period alone.

Task force spokesman Achmad Yurianto said earlier the recent surges in confirmed cases were attributable to improved testing capacity at the provincial level.

The number of probable cases in hospitals also increased by 709 to 35,069 patients.

Jakarta, the epicenter of the Indonesian outbreak, has 5,881 cases and 460 deaths. East Java is at a distant second with 2,105 cases and 183 deaths, followed by West Java (1,618 cases, 100 deaths) and Central Java (1,140 cases, 70 deaths).

The four provinces on most-densely populated island of Java account for 63.1 percent of the national tally.

The remaining provinces have fewer than 1,000 cases each, but South Sulawesi is closing in the gap with 917 cases. Local authorities have blamed most of the transmissions to the March 18 international Muslim pilgrimage in the district of Gowa. The event was canceled in the last minute but more than 8,000 pilgrims from 10 countries including Indonesia had already arrived in the district.

Two other provinces on Java have relatively low cases compared to their neighbors. Banten, just south of Jakarta, has 626 confirmed cases of Covid-19 but the mortality rate is a bit worrying. Almost one in every 10 coronavirus patients has died in the province. Yogyakarta in the southern Java reported only 194 cases and eight deaths.

Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, has only 18 cases, the fewest among the country's 34 provinces, and reported just one coronavirus-related death.

Source: https://jakartaglobe.id/news/indonesias-coronavirus-cases-exceed-1700