TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Covid-19 national task force’s head of data and information technology, Dewi Nur Aisyah, on Sunday announced that four Indonesian provinces have seen a rise in hospital bed occupancy rate with many hospitals treating coronavirus cases already over 50 percent occupied.

This percentage nearly approaches the World Health Organization (WHO) safe threshold of 60-80 percent.

“As of May 22, at 19:00 WIB, we observed four provinces are seeing hospital bed occupancy rates (BOR) of over 50 percent in North Sumatra, West Kalimantan, West Sumatra, and Riau,” said Dewi in the online coordination meeting aired in Youtube on May 23.

According to the data she presented, the hospital bed occupancies are as follows: North Sumatra (57.9 percent), West Kalimantan (57,6 percent), Sumatra (52.8 percent), and Riau (51.1 percent). The other 30 provinces in Indonesia are fortunately recording BOR numbers under 50 percent.

Regions which initially recorded a steady decline in the number of Covid-19 hospital treatments are also showing signs of rising, which include Jakarta, West Java, Central Java, and Yogyakarta.

“The numbers are still low but are starting to rise,” said the task force member.

She then urged regional leaders to prepare for a worst case scenario by beefing up its healthcare systems facilities and actively preventing the surge of Covid-19 cases.

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DEWI NURITA