TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Gilbert Simanjuntak, a member of the Jakarta Legislative Council (DPRD), on Wednesday criticized the Jakarta administration who he believes have shown weak attempts mitigate the pandemic with proper contact tracing, arguing that the lack of it has made the high number of testing seem insignificant.

“Upon mitigating the Covid-19 pandemic, Jakarta has prioritized the 3T but is more dominant in conducting tests and ramblings that it exceeds WHO standards, even though testing must be supported by tracing,” said the PDIP politician in a written statement on March 3.

According to the former WHO’s Deputy of South East Asia Regional Office International Agency for Prevention of Blindness, the capital city’s ability to trace Covid-19 cases is far from ideal and seemingly shows a lack of transparency. He also noted the last data on tracing that was issued in May 2020 with a 1:3 ratio, where three people are traced in one confirmed Covid-19 case.

He believes Jakarta’s tracing capabilities should match other countries such as South Korea and Taiwan which he said has a ratio of 1:33.

“Ideally it should be 1:33 but Jakarta’s data once showed to only be 1:3 in May 2020. Moreover, the testing has many duplications as there is no cleansing. People may be tested repeatedly which means the contact tracing is low,” said Gilbert.

The DPRD member also believes the Jakarta administration has drained most of its efforts to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic through a string of polemical issues with the Central Government.

Read: Micro PPKM; TNI to Deploy More than 29,000 Personnel for Contact Tracing

ANTARA