Jakarta (VNA) – The worst-case COVID-19 scenario has not happened to Indonesia, according to Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin.

Speaking at a press conference on the President Office’s Youtube channel, the minister said that the country estimated 70,000 additional cases per day in the worst-case scenario, but until now a maximum of 50,000 cases are reported per day.

Budi said the daily case record, which was still below the predicted figure, occurred when the government had increased the number of testing or examination of specimens every day.

Currently, Indonesia’s testing capacity has reached 200,000 samples per day, doubling the earlier figure of 60,000-70,000 earlier. The country is working to increase the capacity to 300,000-400,000 samples per day following the request of President Joko Widodo.

At the same time, the ratio of occupation in COVID-19 treatment hospitals has reduced to about 60 percent in Jakarta, 40 percent in Bandung and 82 percent in East Java.

However, the minister still warned local people to keep vigilant against the pandemic.

Meanwhile, a specimen study has shown that the highly-contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus has spread almost evenly throughout Indonesia, according to Siti Nadia Tarmizi, a spokesperson of the Health Ministry.

She was quoted by Antara News Agency as saying that the Delta variant dominates 86 percent of the specimen sequencing conducted in the last 60 days in 24 provinces, so it can be said that it has spread almost evenly throughout Indonesia.

The genomic sequencing laboratory network under the command of the Health Research and Development Agency (Litbangkes) continues to explore the distribution pattern of the COVID-19 variants in Indonesia.

From early 2021 to July 28, Indonesia has reported 3,651 genome sequencing results into a global database. The study results showed that the country should be vigilant against three out of four variants of the coronavirus, namely the Alpha, Beta and Delta variants.

The report deserves an attention, given the potential for transmission of the COVID-19 in Indonesia is still very high, she noted.

To stem the spread of COVID-19, the Indonesian government is strengthening testing and tracing, especially in densely populated settlements, while speeding up vaccination activities./.
VNA