TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo gave three main orders to the regional leadership communication forum (Forkopimda) of East Java. He believed the directives could improve the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the province.

“First, transfer people who are self-isolating at home to centralized isolation sites. Second, speed up vaccination. Third, do not be late in distributing medicines,” said the President before all East Java’s Forkopimda officials on Thursday, August 19.

The head of state said moving self-isolated patients at home to centralized isolation sites was vital. Other than reducing the transmission rate, he suspected that the high death numbers in the province were attributable to the large number of patients undergoing isolation at home.

He also demanded regional heads with the help of the Indonesian Military and the Police use up the vaccine stock quickly and request more doses from the central government.

In August and September, Indonesia will reportedly receive a lot of vaccine doses, reaching 72 million doses and 70 million doses, respectively.

“There must not be stocks of COVID-19 vaccines in the cold storage. Use them up quickly,” he underlined.

Jokowi further asked regional heads to be more aware of the situation and the stocks of medicines for COVID-19 treatments in their respective regions. He did not want any patient to succumb to the illness because of the shortage of drugs.

Read: East Java Population Down by 50,000 in Last Six Months

EGI ADYATAMA