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West Java offers hospitals for COVID-19 patients if Jakarta overwhelmed
The province's hospital occupancy rate stands at around 35 percent.
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Nurses tend to a COVID-19 patient at the Bogor general hospital in Bogor, West Java on Sept. 3. Hospital intensive care units are straining amid the pandemic. (AFP/Adek Berry)
T
he West Java administration has offered Jakarta health authorities to transfer COVID-19 patients to hospitals in the province once the capital’s healthcare system is overwhelmed due to a spike in confirmed cases.
West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil said he had conveyed his offer to his Jakarta counterpart, Anies Baswedan, during a recent virtual meeting.
The hospital occupancy rate in West Java stands at around 35 percent.
“If [hospitals in] Jakarta are overwhelmed, we offer them to use of hospitals in Bogor, Depok and Bekasi,” Ridwan said on Friday as quoted by tribunnews.com.
He added that regions should do more to collaborate instead of competing in terms of handling the outbreak.
Read also: Jakarta lockdown aimed at preventing collapse of healthcare system
West Java COVID-19 task force healthcare facility management head Marion Siagian said only 44 percent of the 4,094 isolation beds across the province were used for COVID-19 patients, despite health authorities recording an increase in the average of daily cases recently.
According to the task force’s official count, West Java has seen an average of 228 new cases a day in the past two weeks.
The province currently has 105 COVID-19 referral hospitals, with an additional 267 hospitals that have sufficient facilities to treat infected patients.
Jakarta will reimpose large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) starting on Monday, after recording a recent spike in infections.
Anies said the occupancy rate for isolation beds in the capital had reached 77 percent early this month. He estimated that all beds would be fully occupied by the end of September should Jakarta fail to contain the disease.
Authorities are still imposing smaller-scale social restrictions in regions with a high-rate of COVID-19’s transmission. Ridwan said mayors or regents would have to propose to the provincial administration if they wanted to impose PSBB in their respective regions.
On Friday, West Java recorded 272 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 286 new recoveries and seven fatalities. Jakarta, the country’s epicenter of COVID-19, saw 964 new cases, 900 new recoveries and 17 fatalities. (mfp)
