Heru Andriyanto, Jakarta – The National Covid-19 Task Force said on Thursday that the percentage of active coronavirus cases in proportion to the total number of reported cases have been declining every month.

Task force spokesman Wiku Adisasmito said Indonesia now has lower percentage of active cases than the global average.

According to the latest data from the Health Ministry, the total number of active cases stands at 60,569 or 15 percent of the 404,048 confirmed cases the country has recorded since the outbreak began.

"The difference from the global average is getting bigger because the percentage of active cases in Indonesia keeps decreasing," Wiku said in a video conference in Jakarta.

The global percentage of active cases in proportion to overall confirmed cases currently stands at 24.23 percent, he said.

According to the task force data, the percentage of active cases has been declining since 91.26 percent in March to 82.57 percent in April, 71.35 percent in May, 57.25 percent in June, 44.02 percent in July, 28.26 percent in August, 23.74 percent in September and 15 percent on Oct. 29.

About 79 percent of 514 districts and cities in the country have fewer than 100 active cases in their respective areas, he added.

The number of cured or discharged Covid-19 patients has increased by 3,985 in the last 24 hours for a total of 329,778. The disease has killed 13,701 people in Indonesia since March.

Major hotspots

Jakarta is home to 25 percent of confirmed coronavirus cases in Indonesia and has 10,875 active cases as of Thursday. The capital city has been averaging 1,025 cases since Oct. 1, down slightly from the previous month.

West Java has the second-biggest number of active cases – 9,894 from a total of 35,607 confirmed cases or 28 percent. It now averages 462 cases per day, second only to Jakarta.

While East Java came second in the total number of confirmed cases, the percentage of active cases is relatively small. It has 2,343 active cases from a total of 52,020 confirmed cases, or just 4.5 percent.

However, East Java has recorded the highest death toll nationally with a total of 3,740 Covid-19 deaths.

Emerging hotspots like Riau and West Sumatra typically have among the worst ratio of active cases to confirmed cases, as caseloads are growing faster than the number of recovered patients.

The total number of cases in Riau has been ballooning by more than 600 percent in less than two months, with a total of 14,511 cases at present. The province in the central part of Sumatra has nearly 4,000 active cases or 24 percent.

West Sumatra has 4,900 active cases from a total of 13,984 cases.

Source: https://jakartaglobe.id/news/percentage-of-active-coronavirus-cases-keeps-declinin