India No Longer Asia’s COVID-19 Hotspot; Who Is The New ‘Leader’?

India is no longer Asia’s coronavirus hotspot.

The new ‘leader’ of this continent is Indonesia, which has overtaken India as the nation with maximum daily COVID-19 cases in the region.

The archipelago reported over 56,000 new coronavirus cases and 982 deaths in the last 24 hours. A month ago, Indonesia was reporting around 8,000 daily cases.

India, on the other hand, reported 41,806 fresh COVID cases and 581 deaths, respectively, on Thursday.

The highly transmissible Delta variant of SARS-Cov-2, which was first detected in India and wreaked havoc in the second wave of the pandemic, is believed to be driving the recent spike in cases in Indonesia.

“I predict the outbreak will increase continuously in July as we are not able yet to prevent the spread of infections. Emergency social restrictions are still inadequate. They should be twice as stringent since we are facing the delta variant, which is two times more contagious,” University of Indonesia epidemiology expert Pandu Riono was quoted as saying by Associated Press.

Indonesian officials believe that the Delta variant, which is highly transmissible, is likely spreading outside

The islands of Java and Bali, which had earlier witnessed outbreaks of coronavirus, closed down places of worship, malls, parks and restaurants to check the deadly virus. Now, the virus has spread outside those two islands as well.

Indonesia has over 2.6 million confirmed cases of coronavirus and 69,000-plus fatalities till date.