IDI Urges Govt to Hold At Least 1.5mn COVID-19 Tests
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21 April 2020 22:03 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) demanded the government immediately enhance its effort to detect the coronavirus infection in a bid to break the chain of the COVID-19 transmission.
The deputy chairman of the association’s board of executive, Slamet Budiarto, suggested that the government should at least conduct 1.5 million coronavirus rapid tests or 0.6 percent of the total 267 million Indonesian population.
“This will be enough to see the full map of the virus spread,” said Slamet when Tempo contacted on Tuesday, April 21.
A source of Tempo from a government institution revealed that the country’s detection capacity and screenings on the pneumonia-like disease at 0.1 percent of the 1,000 population were still low, while, the mortality rate was considerably high at around 8.8 percent.
The government reportedly planned to expand the tests on 1.5 million people, and so that required 24 units of PCR test machines, 300,000 PCR reagents, 1,500 units of rapid molecular test machines (TCM), 1.1 million TCM cartridges, and 37.5 million viral transport medium.
Slamet asserted that the procurement of those medical devices to deal with the pandemic must be completed immediately. “If the government does not want to purchase it, it will be better to just leave it to the private sector, and the government can just pay it later,” he added.
If the government did not act immediately, he went on, Indonesia will not have actual data on the spread of the new coronavirus. As a result, the published data will contrast to the actual data in the field.
The swab test results that could come back within 10 days the fastest will lead to higher COVID-19 cases fatality rate in Indonesia, Slamet concluded.
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