TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Achmad Yurianto, spokesman for the national coronavirus outbreak mitigation, said that the government will not build a special hospital to treat COVID-19 patients, as China has.

"The is no hospital to specifically handle corona patients. Let's not think that [our situation] will be like China," Yurianto said at the Presidential Palace Complex, Jakarta on Tuesday, March 3.

Yurianto said the government currently has designated COVID-19 patients to 100 hospitals that are equipped with international-standard isolation wards.

"The facilities and infrastructure have been prepared to deal with COVID-19, we do not need to build a special hospital," said Yurianto, who is also secretary of the Health Ministry's Directorate General of Disease Prevention and Control.

Yurianto's statement was to clarify an earlier statement from Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono. Basuki said that the government plans to build a new hospital on Galang Island, Batam. The hospital, he said, will serve residents of Sebaru, Natuna and surrounding neighborhoods where people evacuated from the epidemic's centers are currently placed under observation.

Yurianto clarified that the hospital is not made specifically for treating COVID-19 patients.

"That is not a special hospital for COVID-19. That would be an integrated hospital for the border areas that will later be referred to for health services at border regions, as the area is an archipelago."

Dewi Nurita