Jakarta. Indonesia has been past the peak of the coronavirus outbreak since nearly three weeks ago, the National Covid-19 Task Force claimed on Thursday.

The task force said the number of active cases and hospital admissions have been in a steady decline after July 24, when the country registered a record 574,135 active cases.

“Indonesia has been passed the peak of Covid-19 active cases as we saw a 25.77 percent fall or a reduction by 60,902 active cases on August 8,” Dewi Nur Aisyah, the task force’s IT and data center head, said in a video conference.

She said the current statistics were “very encouraging”.

“We examine the development every week in a hope that the total number of active cases will be moving downward steadily. Only in the last two weeks have we seen a consistent fall,” she said.

But she was quick to add that the devastating health crisis is far from over, noting that newly Covid cases are still surging dramatically in certain provinces.

Between July 4 and August 8, several provinces have registered a growth of more than 10,000 active cases each. They include North Sumatra, West Sumatra, East Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, South Sulawesi and Riau.

North Sumatra recorded the most dramatic surge from fewer than 2,900 active cases on July 4 to more than 24,000 on August 8, she said.

The declining number of active cases and hospital admissions was eclipsed by the fatality toll which has been in four-digit territory since July 16.

Indonesia has been averaging 1,652 Covid deaths in the past week, Dewi said.

The virus has killed 113,664 people in Indonesia since the pandemic began. Around a third of the overall death toll occurred in July alone.

The country has added 24,709 new cases in the past 24 hours for a total of 3.77 million. The total number of active cases stands at 412,776.

Earlier this week, the government extended Covid-19 lockdown by another week in Java and Bali and by a fortnight in 45 stricken districts and cities on other islands to “maintain the momentum” of falling active Covid case figures.