JAKARTA: Indonesia has detected two more Omicron variant cases, bringing the total number of the highly transmissible Covid-19 new variant to three, a Health Ministry official said.
The two new cases comprise a 42-year-old male who arrived from South Africa and a 50-year-old man from Britain, and are linked to the five suspected Omicron cases announced on Thursday.
"The finding is the result of a special 'S-gene target failure' examination conducted by the Health Research and Development Agency on Dec 14 and 15.
"The agency detected the variant on two people who were undergoing a mandatory 10-day quarantine at Wisma Atlet hospital after returning from abroad," said Dr Siti Nadia Tarmizi, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health.
The ministry detected the first Omicron case on Wednesday evening in an employee at the Wisma Atlet, the country's largest isolation centre in North Jakarta.
Dr Siti Nadia has appealed to the public to stay vigilant, and not to travel abroad as Covid-19 cases in the United States, Europe and African countries remain high.
In fact, the spread of the Omicron variant is five times faster than the Delta variant.
"It's very important to protect the people around us, so they don't get infected with Covid-19, especially the Omicron variant," she said.
Indonesia became the epicentre of Asia's Covid-19 pandemic with 54,000 infection cases recorded in mid-July this year, but the pandemic now continued to show an easing trend.
Yesterday, 291 new Covid-19 cases were recorded, raising the total tally of infections to 4,260,148. -- Bernama