Indonesia Readies 10,000 Beds for Treating COVID-19 Patients

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indonesia has readied 10,000 beds nationwide at 1,000 hospitals for patients who contracted coronavirus in order to upgrade the capacity and quality of healthcare facilities, according to the National Task Force for COVID-19.

"Over 1,000 hospitals are now functioning to treat COVID-19 patients, whether confirmed positive cases or patients under observation (PDP)," Achmad Yurianto, the government’s spokesperson for COVID-19 response, stated during a daily press briefing here on Monday.

The hospitals comprise those under the management of the central government and local governments as well as police and military in addition to private hospitals. Some seven to 8,000 beds among the available 10,000 are currently occupied, he noted.

The authority has ensured that hospitals across Indonesia will have sufficient capacity to accommodate patients.

Concurrently, the government will continue to upgrade infrastructure to self-produce testing kit and reagent for the real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, as "it becomes significant and one of the government's priorities."

Over 75,000 specimens has been tested using this method and contact tracing, and more tests will be conducted on a massive scale.

"This is the key for us to achieve more than 10,000 real-time PCR tests per day across Indonesia and is important as testing, tracing, treatment, as well as the trimming movement are the all-rounded concept to adopt in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic," Yurianto noted.

Indonesia reported a total of 9,096 COVID-19 positive cases, with 1,151 patients having recovered while another 765 patients succumbing to the disease, as of April 27 at 12:00 p.m. local time.

ANTARA