TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesia COVID-19 mitigation task force decided not to include the graph of the new coronavirus disease case fatality rate (CFR) in its release related to the case development starting Wednesday, April 15. Instead, the team presented the mortality rate per 1 million population.

“Adopting different methods in processing and presenting data on the death toll may result in different interpretations,” said Agus WIbowo, the head of the disaster information and communication data center of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), via his Twitter account on Wednesday, April 15.

Agus explained that if using the calculation of the death rate per one million population, then the country’s figure would stand at two dead cases. “Compared to Spain with 363 death, Italy 338 death, France 229 death, and the UK 167 death per one million population,” he said.

Indonesia’s case fatality rate always seemed to be high. Based on the chart released on Tuesday, April 14, it reached 9.49 percent, higher than the United States’ 3.9 percent. The CFR is a percentage obtained from the number of dead among the number of confirmed positive cases.

Agus opined that the calculation of the death rate per one million population would be more legitimate. “It is fairer to make such comparisons between countries. It does not make sense to compare [the mortality rate] to a small country using the number of positive cases only,” Agus told Tempo on April 15.

He asserted that the adjustment in the calculation method followed the input from the leader of the expert team of the national COVID-19 task force, Wiku Adisasmito. The same method was also used by the Worldometer, https://www.worldometers.info/, a US-based independent digital media company.

FRISKI RIANA