VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesia’s daily COVID-19 cases spiked to a record 11,557 infections on Thursday, taking the total tally to 869,600, according to data from the Task Force for COVID-19 Handling.

With 7,741 people recovering from the virus in 24 hours, the total recoveries reached 711,205. Meanwhile, 295 people succumbed to the virus, taking the death toll to 25,246, the task force reported.

At present, Indonesia has 133,149 active cases, or patients undergoing independent care and isolation after being confirmed to have contracted the virus. Moreover, 64,032 people have been categorized as suspected COVID-19 patients.

In the last 24 hours, 70,376 specimens from 46,097 people have been examined in 566 laboratories across Indonesia, bringing the total number of examined specimens to 8,133,444 from 5,426,234. The first two cases of COVID-19 surfaced in the country on March 2, 2020.

According to the task force, the country's COVID-19 positivity rate has reached 16 percent.

Provinces reporting the highest number of new cases on Thursday included Jakarta, with 3,165 cases; followed by West Java (2,202); Central Java (1,497); East Java (981); and, South Sulawesi (640).

Earlier, Doni Monardo, head of the Task Force for COVID-19 Handling as well as the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), had said that the number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia have shot up significantly over the past 2.5 months.

"Last November, our active cases were the lowest at 12.2 percent, and cumulatively, 54 thousand people (were infected). However, today or yesterday, the number of our active cases reached 123 thousand. This indicates an over twofold increase, or to be precise 122 percent," Monardo remarked while welcoming the arrival of 15 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine from China at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Tangerang, Banten province.

Indonesia commenced its COVID-19 vaccination program on Wednesday (January 13, 2021), with President Joko Widodo receiving the first shot of the Sinovac vaccine.

In the meantime, to counter a spike in COVID-19 cases, Coordinating Economic Affairs Minister Airlangga Hartarto has announced a tightening of restrictions in specific areas in all six provinces on Java Island and Bali province from January 11 to January 25, 2021.

"Limited restrictions are applied in the Java-Bali provinces, as the provinces meet one of the four set parameters," Hartarto said during an online press conference here on Wednesday.

Restrictions are being tightened in Jakarta and adjoining areas, including Bogor City, Bogor district, Depok, Bekasi City, and Bekasi’s districts, the minister noted, as well as partly in Banten, West Java, Central Java, East Java, Yogyakarta, and Bali provinces. (Antaranews)

Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (KKP) Minister Sakti Wahyu Trenggono targets to make Indonesia the world's largest vaname shrimp producer by increasing production to 16 million tons annually, from currently below one million tons.

To this end, Indonesia must begin developing new shrimp ponds spanning an area of 200 thousand hectares until 2024.

"If we succeed in developing 200 thousand hectares of shrimp ponds, with two harvest cycles of 80 tons per hectare per year, based on an economic analysis, it could generate nearly Rp1,200 trillion," Minister Trenggono noted in a press release here on Thursday.

Currently, Indonesia's vaname shrimp production is less than one million tons yearly, below that of China, Ecuador, Vietnam, and India.

Shrimp pond development over 200 thousand hectares not only aims to make Indonesia the top shrimp producer worldwide but also to build a strong defense system to protect the nation’s maritime wealth, he expounded.

Apart from developing new ponds, Trenggono revealed that the KKP will also build aquaculture villages in several parts of Indonesia to boost the community's economy.

The two activities are the ministry's flagship programs that he leads, in line with its motto of developing sustainable aquaculture, he remarked.

The KKP Ministry has targeted to boost aquaculture productivity, from the 2020 production target of 18.44 million tons to 19.47 million tons in 2021.

"The KKP's Directorate General of Aquaculture has set targets and outlined priority programs to increase aquaculture productivity in 2021," Director General of Aquaculture Slamet Soebjakto stated.

Soebjakto explained that the aquaculture production target in 2021 comprised 7.92 million tons of fisheries and 11.55 million tons of seaweed.

The ministry’s other target for 2021 is to boost ornamental fish production for which coordination with the local governments, at the provincial, district, and city levels will be strengthened in order to build synergy in the development of aquaculture in these regions. (antaranews)

An international team of scientists led by the World Health Organization arrived on Thursday in China’s central city of Wuhan to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus that sparked the pandemic, state television said.

The team arrived late in the morning on a budget airline from Singapore and was expected to head into two weeks of quarantine. They had been set to arrive earlier this month, and China’s delay of their visit drew rare public criticism from the agency’s chief.

The United States, which has accused China of hiding the extent of its initial outbreak a year ago, has called for a “transparent” WHO-led investigation and criticised the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts have done the first phase of research.

The team arrived as China battles a resurgence of cases in its northeast after managing for months to nearly stamp out domestic infections.

Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO’s top expert on animal diseases that cross to other species, who went to China on a preliminary mission last July, is leading the 10 independent experts, a WHO spokesman said.

Hung Nguyen, a Vietnamese biologist who is part of the 10-member team, told Reuters that he did not expect any restrictions on the group’s work in China, but cautioned against finding firm answers.

After completing quarantine, the team will spend two weeks interviewing people from research institutes, hospitals and the seafood market in Wuhan where the new pathogen is believed to have emerged, Hung added.

The team would mainly stay in Wuhan, he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday during a stopover in Singapore.

Last week, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Gheybreyesus said he was “very disappointed” that China had still not authorised the team’s entry for the long-awaited mission, but on Monday, he welcomed its announcement of their planned arrival.

“What we would like to do with the international team and counterparts in China is to go back in the Wuhan environment, re-interview in-depth the initial cases, try to find other cases that were not detected at that time and try to see if we can push back the history of the first cases,” Ben Embarek said in November.

China has been pushing a narrative via state media that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered in Wuhan, citing the presence of the virus on imported frozen food packaging and scientific papers claiming it had been circulating in Europe in 2019.

“We are looking for the answers here that may save us in future - not culprits and not people to blame,” the WHO’s top emergency expert, Mike Ryan, told reporters this week, adding that the WHO was willing to go “anywhere and everywhere” to find out how the virus emerged.

Team member Marion Koopmans, a virologist at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said last month it was too soon to say whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus had jumped directly from bats to humans or had an intermediate animal host.

“At this stage what I think we need is a very open mind when trying to step back into the events that led eventually to this pandemic,” she told reporters. (reuters)

South Korea’s top court upheld on Thursday a 20-year jail sentence for former President Park Geun-hye on graft charges that led to her downfall, bringing an end to the legal process and so for the first time raising the possibility of a pardon.

Park became South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be thrown out of office when, in 2017, the Constitutional Court upheld a parliament vote to impeach her over a scandal that also landed the heads of two conglomerates in jail.

The daughter of a military dictator, Park took office in 2013 as South Korea’s first woman president. She was brought down after being found guilty of colluding with a confidante to receive tens of billions of won from major conglomerates to help her family and fund non-profit foundations she owned.

Her case has been heard in different courts, including a retrial in July last year, but the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday to uphold a 20-year jail term and fine of 18 billion won ($16.38 million) exhausts her legal avenues.

Park, 68, who has been in jail since March 31, 2017, has denied wrongdoing. She was not present in court.

The end of the legal process clears the way for a presidential pardon, which her supporters called for.

“President Park Geun-hye is innocent,” the right-wing Our Republican Party said in a statement.

“The members of Our Republican Party want President Park to be freed as soon as possible.”

The chief of the ruling Democratic party, Lee Nak-yon, has floated the idea of a pardon for Park and another ex-president, Lee Myung-bak, also in jail on corruption charges, in the name of national unity.

Park is a divisive figure in a country where old Cold War fault lines between right and left can still define political rivalry.

A top aide to President Moon Jae-in, who is a liberal, said the president would make a decision on the question of a pardon for Park that reflects the will of the people.

Society appears split down the middle.

A survey by the pollster Realmeter last week found 47.7% of respondents in favour of a pardon and 48% against.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee faces a final court ruling on Monday on whether he returns to jail on charges he bribed an associate of Park. (reuters)