Indonesia’s coronavirus fatality rate nears 10 per cent as cases grow to 1,155

JAKARTA, Mar 28, 2020, Jakarta Globe. Indonesia reported 109 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday to a total of 1,155. Fifteen more patients died, bringing the total number of casualties from the virus to 102 or almost ten percent of entire cases, Jakarta Globe reported.

Another sad point of the latest statistics is the lower rate of recoveries compared to deaths.

“There are 13 patients who have recovered and been discharged from hospitals. The total number of recoveries is 59,” Achmad Yurianto, spokesman for the government’s Covid-19 Task Force, said in a daily video conference in Jakarta.

“We are concerned with these continued transmissions. Positive cases are found in the community while physical contacts keep happening and people don’t really wash their hands more frequently,” he said.

The virus is mostly transmitted by the touch of the hands according to the data, Achmad said without elaborating.

People who develop Covid-19 symptoms may self-isolate at home but they must “keep a distance by more than a meter from others, always wear a face mask and avoid sharing dishes”, he said.

The outbreak has affected 29 out of 34 provinces in the archipelago, according to the government data. Five provinces that have not reported a single case include East Nusa Tenggara, Bangka Belitung, Bengkulu, Gorontalo and West Sulawesi.

Jakarta is the epicenter of the outbreak with 627 cases, followed by West Java (119), Banten (103), East Java (77), Central Java (55), South Sulawesi (33) and Yogyakarta (22).

The capital city also accounts for 60 percent of the country’s Covid-19 death toll.