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Ministry converts Wisma Atlet Kemayoran into emergency COVID-19 hospital
Four of its 10 towers will be converted to treat COVID-19 patients.
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An aerial view of the Wisma Atlet Kemayoran athletes village in Central Jakarta on July 20, 2019. (Antara/Hafidz Mubarak)
The Public Works and Public Housing Ministry is preparing to turn Wisma Atlet Kemayoran, a former athletes village in Central Jakarta, into an emergency hospital to treat people with COVID-19, according to an official.
Wisma Atlet was used in the 2018 Asian Games, which was cohosted by Jakarta and Palembang, South Sumatra.
Four of its 10 towers will be converted to treat COVID-19 patients.
Meanwhile, one tower, which consists of 650 residential units that can house 1,750 people, has been designated as an emergency hospital for hospice care.
Another tower comprising 886 units and with a capacity of 2,458 people will support the emergency hospital, with the first floor allocated for emergency rooms, the second floor for intensive care units and the third floor for recovery rooms.
The fourth to 24th floors are will used as regular hospice rooms.
The sixth and seventh towers, each also providing 650 residential units with a capacity of 1,750 people, will house on-duty health workers and the COVID-19 Task Force, respectively.
"We are seeking to complete the COVID-19 Emergency Hospital in the next four days," the ministry's housing procurement director general, Khalawi Abdul Hamid, said in a statement released on Thursday. "It's expected to start operating on Monday."
COVID-19 was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and has since spread to the rest of the world, including Indonesia, with confirmed cases mainly found in Jakarta. Out of the 309 confirmed cases nationwide, 210 are in the capital, according to the Health Ministry’s disease control and prevention director general, Achmad "Yuri" Yurianto.
State-owned diversified manufacturer PT Rajawali Nusantara Indonesia, which also oversees imports of 500,000 rapid testing kits for COVID-19 from China, will be in charge of operations and maintenance of the Wisma Atlet emergency hospital.
"[The use of] Wisma Atlet is still under further discussion," Yuri, who also acts as the government's spokesperson for COVID-19, told The Jakarta Post via text message on Thursday. (dfr)
