Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo said that as of Sunday, 64 hospitals in the region had asked for additional medical staff, specifically 914 nurses — 629 for isolation facilities and 285 for intensive care units (ICU) — and 26 doctors, comprising 21 for isolation facilities and five for ICUs.

“We’re still working on it. We are working closely with the Indonesian Medical Association [IDI] and the Indonesian Nurses Association [PPNI],” Ganjar said on Monday as quoted by kompas.id.

Several weeks ago, a number of COVID-19 hospitals in Central Java were reportedly operating at full capacity. The hospitals were located in Surakarta city, Wonosobo regency and in some parts of Semarang city.

To address the province’s bed and room shortage, the governor said the administration had increased the bed capacity at isolation facilities in top-tier hospitals to 1,320 beds from the previously available 1,176 beds, and to 132 beds from 99 in ICUs.

Meanwhile, second-tier hospitals now have 2,723 beds from the previously available 2,374 at isolation facilities, and 268 ICU beds from the previous 185.

“As for third-tier hospitals, we now have 6,978 beds in isolation wards, from 2,388 previously, while in the ICUs, we have 415 beds when we used to have 153,” Ganjar said.

As of Monday, the Central Java COVID-19 task force has recorded over 72,000 confirmed cases, including more than 10,000 patients still in treatment, over 57,000 recoveries and at least 4,400 deaths. On Monday alone, the province saw 1,554 new cases.

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Wonosobo regency has recorded the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Central Java with more than 3,700 infections, of which 1,859 patients have recovered and 191 have died as of Monday.

The Wonosobo Health Agency’s disease prevention and control head, Jaelan Sulat, said most cases were the result of social activities in the region. 

“The social activities include celebrative events, takziah [comforting the bereaved] and whatnot, followed by household and office [virus] clusters,” Jaelan said.

The high number of cases in Wonosobo were detected through rampant testing and tracing. The administration has also applied a strict policy in regard to handling COVID-19 patients and asymptomatic carriers.

Jaelan went on to say that the administration had ordered three COVID-19 hospitals in the regency to make polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests mandatory for those with symptoms and without before they were declared disease-free.

“At least we had one [PCR] negative result. We are not afraid of having a high case number. Our priority is to provide proper health services for the public,” he added. (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.