Day: August 20, 2022

Jakarta As many as 1,589,144 farm animals have been vaccinated against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Indonesia so far, according to data from the FMD Handling Task Force, accessed from here on Saturday.

The task force data showed that the 1,589,144 farm animals comprise 1,505,113 heads of cattle, 23,460 buffaloes, 34,978 sheep, 15,090 goats, and 10,503 pigs.

The task force reported that currently, 290 districts and cities in 24 provinces have been affected by the FMD outbreak.

The total number of infected animals since the first case was confirmed in East Java on May 5, 2022, has so far touched 497,834 heads, comprising 473,019 cattle, 19,131 buffaloes, 1,728 sheep, 3,868 goats, and 88 pigs.

Meanwhile, a total of 6,544 farm animals—6,311 cattle, 140 buffaloes, 36 sheep, and 57 goats—have been reported dead.

According to the task force’s data, the number of recovered animals has reached 341,353, comprising 324,424 heads of cattle, 13,201 buffaloes, 1,224 sheep, 2,467 goats, and 37 pigs.

To check FMD transmission, the Ministry of Agriculture launched a vaccination program for farm animals from Sidoarjo district, East Java, on June 14, 2022.

Earlier, the director of animal health at the Agriculture Ministry’s Directorate General of Livestock and Animal Health, Nuryani Zainuddin, informed that the government will import 14 million doses of the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccine as part of the effort to curb FMD transmission in the country.

“We are in the process of ordering 14 million vaccine doses,” she said at an online press conference on Thursday (August 18).

The vaccine doses are expected to arrive no later than October 2022, she said adding, the vaccinations of farm animals will be accelerated.

Under its vaccination program, the government is aiming to inoculate healthy farm animals in regions that have been designated as outbreak regions, Zainuddin disclosed.

“Currently, there are 24 provinces that have been infected with FMD, so all of these provinces are targeted to get the vaccine,” she informed.

Source: Antara News

Jakarta Spokesperson for the Ministry of Health Mohammad Syahril on Saturday asked Indonesians to remain calm after the ministry confirmed the nation’s first monkeypox case, saying the symptoms experienced by the patient were mild.

“This monkeypox illness is not too severe. We can stay calm. Even if we compare it with COVID-19, it (monkeypox) is far (less severe),” Syahril said at an online press conference here on Saturday.

Monkeypox has an incubation period of 21–28 days, and usually, patients recover on their own as long as they have no comorbidities or suffer from additional infections, he added.

“If the patient has no comorbidities, no immunocompromised, and no other things that worsen, inshallah (if God wills), this patient can actually recover on his own,” he said.

Based on reports of monkeypox cases worldwide, the number of patients who have died is very small, with only about 1 percent or 400 patients dying out of the total 39,700 patients, he noted.

“Thus, it is very small, far compared to COVID, which sometimes reaches 10 percent to 15 percent,” he said.

In addition, monkeypox patients treated in hospitals do not require to be kept in negative pressure isolation rooms like COVID-19 patients.

“The isolation rooms are different. Even though they are both isolation rooms, isolation rooms for COVID are negative pressure rooms, while for monkeypox, it does not require negative pressure rooms,” he explained.

On Saturday, the Ministry of Health announced that Indonesia’s first monkeypox infection had been confirmed in a 27-year-old man in Jakarta.

According to Syahril, the patient recently traveled abroad and experienced symptoms such as fever and rashes in some parts of his body.

In addition, the patient experienced spleen enlargement, he added.

“However, the condition is good, meaning that he is not severely ill, and he has rashes on his face, on the palms of his hands, feet, and some around the genitals,” he said.

Source: Antara News