People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Bambang Soesatyo has urged authorities to conduct an overall evaluation of COVID-19 handling in Jakarta, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi.

“I’m expecting the city administrations, along with their respective COVID-19 task forces, to evaluate their own approaches to virus handling, from the system to the capacity of healthcare facilities,” Bambang said in statement on Thursday, as quoted by Antara.

He added that increases in confirmed COVID-19 cases would be addressed by additional virus referral hospitals for patients with symptoms and isolation facilities for asymptomatic patients.

“Therefore, when [a region] needs to add capacity to healthcare services, the government can make proper arrangements to provide them with healthcare workers to provide the best services for COVID-19 patients,” he said.

Bambang supported strong partnerships between local governments and the private sector in the form of providing isolation facilities in hotels.

He also encouraged central government and local administrations to continue to coordinate to lessen the number of COVID-19 cases and make policies to avoid clashes in the future. 

“Therefore, regions can curb virus transmission by implementing, among other things, mini-lockdowns, while maintaining COVID-19 contact tracing, testing and treatment,” he said.

Read also: COVID-19 surveillance remains lacking in Indonesia

The national COVID-19 task force said in a statement on Thursday that the number of cases were continuing to increase. Nevertheless, the fatality rate had been decreasing.

Nationally, COVID-19 deaths this week decreased by 7.7 percent from the previous week. 

As of Thursday, Indonesia had recorded 320,564 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 244,060 recoveries and 11,580 deaths. 

Previously, West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil has said that at least three regions in the province are facing a spike in family COVID-19 clusters.  

Ridwan, who has opened an office in Depok to monitor the government’s COVID-19 response, said the pandemic remained in an alarming state because Bogor, Bekasi and particularly Depok were still recording rising confirmed cases. 

“What I’ve received so far is that we’re having a spike in family clusters. For example, out of 200 families [that have confirmed COVID-19 cases] in Bogor, three members, on average, of each family have the virus. A similar situation is occurring in Bekasi,” Ridwan said as quoted by kompas.com on Tuesday.

National COVID-19 task force spokesman Wiku Adisasmito said he hoped more people would be willing to opt for individual polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, also known as swab tests, as the government had set a price cap. Experts agree that PCR tests remain the best available method of COVID-19 testing. (nkn)

 

Editor’s note: This article is part of a public campaign by the COVID-19 task force to raise people’s awareness about the pandemic.