December 11, 2020
An elderly woman places her ballot in a ballot box on Dec 9 at the Kalitengah Lor polling station in Glagaharjo of Magelang, Central Java. The 2020 simultaneous regional elections were held on Wednesday in 270 regencies and municipalities across Indonesia.
The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network
An epidemiologist has warned of a potential surge in Covid-19 cases in the coming weeks as the polls closed yesterday for the 2020 regional elections (Pilkada).
Dicky Budiman at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, has released sobering estimates that Indonesia’s daily infection rate could increase by up to 10 percent and its fatality rate by up to 9 percent.
The study, which analyzed the official data of 15 developed countries using a “backcasting approach”, estimated that the true number of infected people in these countries was 6.2 times higher than the reported figures.
The polls also posed a potential “superspreader” event, despite the General Elections Commission (KPU) enacting a new regulation on the health protocols during the elections.
In neighboring Malaysia, which held an election on Sept. 26 in Sabah state, saw a surge in daily infections 10 days after the polls due to high community mobility and broke its own record following weeks of recording a single- or double-digit increase per day, reported the
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