Jakarta – Indonesia has reported 20,574 new daily cases and 355 deaths from Covid-19 on Thursday, placing it among the top five countries with the highest daily number of cases worldwide after Brazil, India, Columbia, and Argentina, data collected by statistics website Worldometer showed.

The most populous country in Southeast Asia was seeing a dramatic increase in the number of cases in the past week, rising by more than 42 percent compared to a week earlier, a paces that the country has never seen since the early stage of the pandemic, the Health Ministry data showed.

Even during its previous surge and peak in January, Indonesia only saw a weekly increase of 21-27 percent.

Indonesia shared a similar upward trajectory with Brazil and Colombia, while new cases in India and Argentina were going down. Data from Oxford-based research institute Our World in Data showed.

The real-time reproduction rates (R) – an epidemiological measure of how many people are likely to be infected by an active patient – in these three countries were still above one. A reading above one means the disease will continue to spread in the population, while a reading below one means it will eventually subside.

Relative to population, the new cases in Indonesia were worse than in India. The Southeast Asian country now has 50 new cases per million people, compared to India's 39.6. It is 553, 403, and 363 per million people in Columbia, Argentina, and Brazil, respectively.

Covid-19 New Cases, Deaths and Reproduction Rates on Thursday

Country New Cases New Deaths R
Brazil 72,705 2,042 1.07
India 51,248 965 0.67
Colombia 32,997 689 1.03
Argentina 24,463 452 0.81
Indonesia 20,182 355 1.38

Source: Worldometer, Our World in Data

Wiku Adisasmito, the spokesman for Indonesia's Covid-19 Handling Task Force, said in a statement on Thursday that the new cases increase in Indonesia has been "significant."

He said five provinces in Java, Indonesia's most populous island, drove up the spike in Covid-19 cases. On Thursday, Jakarta contributed 7,505 new cases or 36 percent of the national figure. Central Java contributed 21 percent, followed by West Java (15 percent), East Java (4.6 percent), and Yogyakarta (3.8 percent).

Source: https://jakartaglobe.id/news/covid19-daily-new-cases-in-indonesia-is-now-the-5th-highest-in-the-worl