REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Indonesian Government through the Task Force for the Acceleration of Covid-19 Handling explained that a significant increase in positive cases of the new corona virus in recent days.

Indonesia said such increase took place due to increased test specimen capacity from the results of tracking close patient contacts. 

The Task Force said the increase in positive cases over the past few days could not be directly linked to the potential for the second wave of Covid-19.

"The calculations we have observed, we believe those are the result of increasing Indonesia's capacity to carry out tests," said Team Leader of the Task Force for Handling Acceleration of Covid-19 Wiku Adisasmito during an English-language regular press teleconference in Jakarta, Thursday (11/6).

"Therefore, we cannot link this increase to the second wave of virus transmission," he said.

Wiku said the government had succeeded in reaching the first target of increasing the specimen test capacity of 10 thousand samples per day. 

In fact, Indonesia has tested 14 thousand specimens per day for the diagnosis of Covid-19. Now the government is working to increase the specimen test capacity to 20 thousand per day.

"At the moment more laboratories and universities are capable of conducting tests," he said.

Wiku said it would be more accurate to see the development of the Covid-19 case based on data from each region. There are areas that have greatly improved and are categorized as the yellow zone, the green zone, but indeed there are still listed as red zones.

"To deal with the outbreak, it also depends on the response and management of the local area, to be able to meet basic needs on the ground," he said.

In the last two days, Tuesday (9/6) and Wednesday (10/6), Indonesia recorded the highest record of adding Covid-19 cases within 24 hours. 

Based on Task Force data, on Tuesday, there were 1,043 new cases of Covid-19. The number of new cases is the first time to exceed the number of more than 1,000 cases a day. Then, on Wednesday an additional 1,241 new cases of Covid-19 were recorded in just one day.

Twice the addition of up to 1,000 positive cases is the highest, counted since the first Covid-19 case in Indonesia was announced by the government on March 2, 2020. While on Thursday (11/6), there were 979 new cases of Covid-19 in Indonesia .