Hopes Abound for New Order

Two years of the Covid-19 pandemic have tested the nation’s resilience, with everyone forced to adapt their lives considerably. Hopes remain aflame, thanks to the advancement in therapy and vaccines.

KOMPAS/AGUS SUSANTO

Officers carry the coffin of a Covid-19 patient at the Rorotan TPU, Cilincing, North Jakarta, Monday (14/2/2022). Data from the Ministry of Health for the period January 21 to February 8 2022 shows that of the 487 Covid-19 patients who died, 66 percent of them had not been fully vaccinated.

Since the first case of Covid-19 was reported in Indonesia on 2 March, 2020, the transmission of the disease has raged across the country. As of Tuesday (1/3/2022), 5.58 million people had been infected and 148,660 had died.

When the world was hit for the first time by the pandemic in early 2020, evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom, commenting in Nature, predicted that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 would not be completely eradicated. Instead, it would become endemic and permanently inhibit humans.

Bloom, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, the United States, saw the SARS-CoV-2 virus as potentially developing into a road map leading to a future pandemic. After two years of the virus' evolution, the Omicron and Delta variants breached the antibody-enhancing potential of the previous variants.

New variant

Following the wave of the Delta variant in mid-2021, which claimed thousands of lives, the Omicron variant has now hit the country. According to the World Health Organization, the Omicron variant, which was first reported in South Africa, has a 2.9 times higher risk of transmission than the Delta variant with a 5.4 times increased risk of reinfection compared with Delta.

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According to Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO technical lead on Covid-19 official, in a statement on the WHO website, the degree of infection from the Omicron variant varies, ranging from asymptomatic or mild, to requiring hospitalization and death.

The Omicron variant tends to infect the upper respiratory tract, compared with the Delta variant’s infection of the lower respiratory tract. The clinical symptoms of the Omicron variant generally include a sore throat, cough, fever, chills, fatigue, stomach pain and a runny nose. Very few cases show shortness of breath and anosmia.

KOMPAS/RONY ARIYANTO NUGROHO

Traffic conditions on the Puncak Highway in Cisarua, Bogor Regency, West Java, when the one-way system was implemented because it was crowded with tourists during the weekend, Sunday (13/2/2022). Vehicles that are dominated by Jakarta are seen crowding this tourist area. Some residents who visited were also seen not implementing health protocols such as wearing masks properly.

Although the preliminary data show Omicron is lighter, the variant is still dangerous in vulnerable groups, namely the elderly and people with comorbidities. A temporary analysis by the School of Public Health, University of Indonesia (FKM UI), regarding risk factors for Covid-19 deaths in Indonesia from March 2020 to February 2022, revealed that the proportion of deaths due to Covid-19 was mostly in the elderly, those with comorbidities and those who had not been vaccinated.

According to Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist at the FKM UI, the spike in cases could repeat, depending on the emergence of new variants and public mobility.

However, the current situation is considered very different from that of the beginning of the pandemic because most of the population has built immunity, either from infection or vaccination. Such a development that caused the post-holiday spike in cases at the end of 2021 was not as high as previous spikes, and with a relatively low death rate. Health facilities have also been better prepared.

Erlina Burhan, a lecturer at the Department of Pulmonology and Respiratory Medicine at the School of Medicine, the University of Indonesia-Friendship Center General Hospital, said that the Covid-19 therapy protocol continued to develop with treatment being adjusted to the severity of the infection, ranging from asymptomatic to severe.

Also read:

> Omicron is Not the End

> Overcoming Omicron and Future Variants

In addition to vitamins C and D, antiviral drugs that can be used according to medical prescription are Favipiravir, Molnupiravir, Nirmatrelvir or Ritonavir. Treatment also involves symptomatic, supportive treatment and treatment for comorbidities or complications. No less important is to undergo self-isolation or centralized isolation to break the chain of transmission.

The risk of death can also be reduced by vaccination, including for those with comorbidities, such as diabetes and hypertension. As seen in a number of studies, the vaccination is able to reduce hospitalizations and deaths due to Covid-19 and is still effective in dealing with potential new variants.

After all, Covid-19 will continue to mutate and adapt. Omicron now has a more infectious BA.2 subvariant than the currently circulating variant in Indonesia. So health protocols such as wearing masks, washing hands with soap, maintaining distance proximity and avoiding crowds must continue. Only then do we deserve to hope for a new order amid a pandemic that has yet to end completely.

This article was translated by Musthofid.