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Disaster-stricken regions step up COVID-19 countermeasures
Regional administrations are rolling out COVID-19 countermeasures, including testing and containment, in a number of disaster-stricken areas in an effort to avoid the additional burden of new infection clusters.
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A rescue team searches the collapsed Mitra Manakarra hospital on Jan. 18, after a 6.2 magnitude earthquake shook Mamuju, West Sulawesi, on Jan. 15. (Agence France Presse/Adek Berry)
T
he government is stepping up COVID-19 countermeasures in disaster-hit regions in an effort to prevent new infection clusters from emerging and compounding existing crises.
In West Sulawesi, which was struck by a series of high magnitude earthquakes last week, the Health Ministry has been testing displaced persons for the virus and grouping them based on their results.
“We are screening and testing evacuees, so in two days people who tested positive for COVID-19 will be separated from those who tested negative,” said the head of the ministry’s Health Crisis Center, Budi Sylviana, at a press conference this week.
He added that the ministry had dispatched contact tracing teams from Jakarta and Makassar to South Sulawesi to provide support at evacuation points in the province as a means of curbing possible transmission.
A mobile polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing station would be brought in from Makassar, he said, enabling both antigen and PCR swab tests to be conducted on location in Mamuju, one of the regencies where the quake hit hardest.
The region was struck by a 5.9 magnitude earthquake on Thursday, and an even stronger 6.2 magnitude seismic shock followed the morning after, just as a search and rescue teams were mobilizing to locate survivors.
According to data from the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), at least 15,014 people in Mamuju and 4,421 people in Majene regency were displaced by the West Sulawesi earthquake.
