JAKARTA, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia has registered more than 4 million COVID-19 cases since the first case was confirmed in the country in March last year.
On Tuesday, the country's Health Ministry reported that the coronavirus cases across the archipelago country rose by 19,106 within the past 24 hours to 4,008,166 with the death toll adding by 1,038 to 128,252.
To date, more than 3.6 million have recovered from the disease, the ministry reported.
Indonesia has the highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the Southeast Asia region.
The coronavirus has spread to all the country's 34 provinces with the national capital Jakarta having the most cases, while Central Java has the highest number of deaths.
The government is currently implementing four-tiered restrictions on community activities (locally abbreviated as PPKM) on the most populated island of Java and the resort spot of Bali as well as a number of provinces outside the two islands, which is set to end on Aug. 30.
Official numbers from the Health Ministry showed that the number of new cases of coronavirus in the last few weeks are declining, suggesting that Indonesia's devastating second coronavirus wave has passed its peak. The country's Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin made a statement relating to that in early August.
Driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant, the country in July has seen an upsurge of cases which overwhelmed health workers, and has seen coronavirus-related deaths soaring to record levels.
On Monday, President Joko Widodo said during a live-streamed briefing that several areas on Java and Bali, such as Greater Jakarta, Bandung in West Java and Surabaya in East Java, which were previously implementing PPKM Level 4, can now lower the level of the restrictions to Level 3.
Since last week, the government has started to ease the restrictions in several major cities.
Public places such as shopping malls and restaurants in a number of regions implementing PPKM Level 4 are allowed to open with the limited number of visitors and other certain restricted conditions.
Schools in regions implementing PPKM Level 1, 2 and 3 are now allowed to open for face-to-face learning activities with restricted conditions.
The government continues to accelerate the national vaccination program and intensify contact tracing efforts. The vaccine is free of charge for all Indonesians.
To date, at least 32.64 million people in the country have received two shots of vaccines, and the number of those who had been injected with the first doses reached 58.46 million.
The government is targeting to vaccinate 208.2 million people. Enditem
