The government has clarified its decision to exclude the daily death tally data from the group of indicators it uses to establish the level of curbs in its multi-tiered public activity restrictions (PPKM), saying that the move was only a “temporary” measure.

Office of Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Ministry spokesperson Jodi Mahardi explained that the decision was taken after the government found that the COVID-19 deaths were not updated regularly.

“We are not [permanently] excluding [fatality data from the curbs assessment], but we will temporarily ignore the data because we found the inputted data were an accumulation of deaths from the past few weeks, resulting in a distortion or bias in the assessment,” said Jodi in a statement on Wednesday, adding that the situation had made it difficult for the government to accurately assess the pandemic situation across the country.

He went on to say that the government had deployed a team to specifically address the situation, adding that the daily death tally would again be included in the government’s curbs assessment “after the data have been cleaned up.”

In the meantime, Jodi said the government would use other indicators, such as bed occupancy rates (BORs), confirmed cases, hospitalization rates and testing and tracing, as well as socio-economic conditions, in assessing its COVID-19 restrictions policy.

Read also: Government seeks to simplify curbs regime with another name change

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