VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

An earthquake of magnitude 6.4 struck central Croatia on Tuesday, killing seven people, injuring more than 20 and rattling several neighbouring countries, officials and residents said.

Rescuers pulled people from the rubble of collapsed buildings in Petrinja and other towns, and army troops were sent to the area to help.

Tremors were also felt in Croatia’s capital Zagreb and as far away as Austria’s capital Vienna. Slovenia shut its only nuclear power plant as a precaution.

It was the second quake to strike the area in two days.

The GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences said it hit at 1119 GMT at a depth of 10 km (6 miles), with the epicentre in Petrinja, 50 km south of Zagreb.

“By now, in the vicinity of the town of Glina we have five fatalities. Together with a (12-year-old) girl from Petrinja there are altogether six dead,” Deputy Prime Minister Tomo Medved said while visiting Glina.

State news agency Hina, citing firefighters, later reported that a seventh victim had been found in the rubble of a church in the village of Zazina.

Police said at least 20 people were slightly injured and six more severely wounded in the temblor.

“The search through the rubble is continuing,” police said in a statement.

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Throughout the day many aftershocks occurred measuring 3.0 magnitude or slightly stronger.

Tomislav Fabijanic, head of emergency medical services in Sisak, said many people were wounded in Petrinja and Sisak and their injuries included fractures and concussions.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, who rushed to Petrinja, said: “The army is here to help. We will have to move some people from Petrinja because it is unsafe to be here.”

The head of the hospital in Sisak said later it was treating 20 people, two with severe injuries.

The N1 television station showed footage of rescuers in Petrinja pulling a man and a child alive from the debris. Other footage showed a house with its roof caved in. The N1 reporter said she did not know if anyone was inside.

N1 also said a kindergarten was destroyed in the quake but that there were no children in it at the time.

Piles of stone, brick and tiles littered Petrinja’s streets in the aftermath of the quake, and cars parked in the road were smashed by falling debris.

A worker who had been fixing a roof in a village outside Petrinja told N1 that the quake threw him to the ground. Nine of the 10 houses in the village were destroyed, he said.

WRAPPED IN BLANKETS
The quake was also felt in Zagreb, where people rushed onto the streets, some of which were strewn with broken roof tiles and other debris.

Patients and medical staff were evacuated from Zagreb’s Sveti Duh Hospital, with many left sitting in chairs in the street wrapped in blankets.

In Austria’s second city Graz, about 200 km (130 miles) north of Petrinja, tall buildings wobbled for about two minutes, according to broadcaster ORF. In Carinthia province, about 300 km to the northwest of Petrinja, the earth trembled for several minutes and people described how their furniture, Christmas trees and lamps wobbled.

In Slovenia, the STA news agency said the country’s sole nuclear power plant, 100 km (60 miles) from the epicentre, was shut down as a precaution.

Croatia’s state news agency Hina said the quake was felt in a total of 12 countries.

Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said Croatia was expecting help from the European Union as it had activated its emergency situation mechanism.

A day earlier on Monday, a magnitude 5.2 earthquake hit central Croatia, also near Petrinja.

In March, a temblor of magnitude 5.3 rattled Zagreb, causing one death and injuring 27 people. (reuters)

A 46-year-old nurse became the first person in Singapore to receive Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, making the city-state among the first Asian countries to begin an inoculation campaign against the coronavirus.

Sarah Lim, a senior staff nurse at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, was the first of more than 30 staff at the centre who are being vaccinated on Wednesday, the health ministry said. They will return for the second dose of the vaccine on Jan. 20.

“I feel very grateful and thankful for being the first to be vaccinated in Singapore,” said Lim, who helps screen suspected COVID-19 cases. In recorded remarks provided by the health ministry, she said she hoped to encourage others to get vaccinated.

Singapore is the first country in Asia to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. It has also signed advance purchase agreements and made early down payments on several other vaccine candidates, including those being developed by Moderna and Sinovac.

It expects to have enough vaccine doses for all 5.7 million people by the third quarter of 2021.

Singapore acted swiftly after the first cases of the virus were reported and although it was blindsided by tens of thousands of cases in migrant workers dormitories, it has reported just a handful of new cases over the last two months. The country has one of the world’s lowest COVID-19 fatality rates; only 29 people have died of the virus.

To show the vaccine is safe, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, 68, said he and his colleagues would be among the early recipients of the shots. They will be free and voluntary, but the government is encouraging all medically eligible residents to take them.

China is inoculating specific groups of people considered at high risk of infection, such as medical workers and border inspectors, under an emergency use programme started in July. Its vaccines are still in late-stage clinical trials.

In Japan and South Korea, the U.S military has begun its first wave of COVID-19 vaccinations, prioritising frontline medical workers.

Some Philippine soldiers and cabinet ministers have already received COVID-19 vaccine injections even before regulatory approval. (reuters)

Social Affairs Minister Tri Rismaharini spoke of the government having formulated a new-fangled mechanism for distributing basic food aid in 2021 that can prevent fraud.

"We will distribute basic necessities. In February, we will update a mechanism for distributing basic food aid that is easier," Rismaharini stated during a virtual press conference after a limited meeting at the Presidential Office, Jakarta, on Tuesday.

The minister conveyed that a more comprehensive basic food aid distribution mechanism will be readied. Later, in the distribution of basic food aid, the government will not only offer assistance but will also receive reports on the aid recipients.

"Hence, we are optimistic that no one else would attempt to cut or misuse. This is because these reports will enter us in the process of receiving aid," Risma revealed.

In 2021, the government will redistribute social assistance to the community as was the case all through 2020.

The distribution of social assistance during 2020 has averaged above 90 percent.

The Social Affairs Ministry had earlier launched the Social Entrepreneurship Program (Prokus) targeting graduated beneficiaries of the Family Hope Program (PKH) to assist them in keeping their businesses afloat.

"Prokus is aimed at empowering people through business approaches," the ministry's Director General of Social Empowerment, Edi Suharto, noted in a statement here on Sunday.

The first strategy is the B-for-S business approach to address the social risk, while the second is the B plus S approach, a business and social integration strategy for the people’s empowerment.

The program is expected to lower poverty and unemployment.

Prokus has three components known as the Triple Power, comprising social assistance in incentive for working capital (BSiMU), Business Mentoring Incubation (IMB), and social mentoring.

For implementation of the program, the ministry has involved Oorange Unpad (Padjajaran University), State Polytechnic of Semarang (Polines) ZFN Agape Indonesia (Titipku), Bina Swadaya, and mentors from social affairs office in sub-districts.

"The entrepreneurship program is part of the government's intervention to help graduated PKH beneficiaries to survive in this pandemic," Suharto stated, adding that this is an anchor of the ministry's social empowerment program.

In 2020, Prokus fund of Rp3.5 million each was distributed to one thousand graduated PKH beneficiaries in the five regions of Majalengka District, West Bandung District, Jakarta, Semarang District, and Bantul District. (antaranews)

The Indonesian government will rope in laboratories capable of sequencing the entire genome to examine the new mutation of the coronavirus that has been detected in several countries, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said.

“There may be about 11 out of 12 laboratories in Indonesia with the Ministry of National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) that have the ability for genome sequencing,” Budi said during a press teleconference originating from the Presidential Office in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The Ministry of Health, he said, will ask a referral hospital handling COVID-19 patients to routinely send patient examination samples to a designated laboratory for the purposes of research on the mutation of the coronavirus.

"We will also ensure that referral hospitals with a lot of COVID-19 patients send their samples regularly," he added.

The Health Minister said that the government is also collaborating with international institutions in researching the new mutation of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

"This is to see, to find out the pattern of its spread in the world, because the virus has indeed spread at the world level," the minister stated.

The former deputy minister of state-owned enterprises said that until now it is not known whether the mutated coronavirus has also entered Indonesian territory.

“Until now, we don't know yet, because in order to detect this virus strain, whole genome sequencing must be carried out. Sequencing genetic information from this virus must be done,” Sadikin said.

He urged the public to remain disciplined in implementing the health protocols, wearing masks, maintaining distance, and washing hands, to prevent coronavirus transmission.

Indonesia added 7,903 fresh coronavirus infections in a single day, bringing the total case tally to 727,122, the Task Force for COVID-19 Handling reported here on Tuesday.

With 6,805 more people recovering from the virus, the total number of COVID-19 recoveries reached 596,783.

With 251 COVID-19 patients succumbing to the virus, the total death toll reached 21,703.

The data was obtained from 65,143 specimens examined in a day. The cumulative number of specimens examined in Indonesia has reached 7,224,452 so far.

The country also registered 68,181 suspected COVID-19 infections in 510 districts and cities in 34 provinces. (antaranews)