The Government Asks Residents Who Take A Long Vacation At The End Of October To Test For COVID-19

JAKARTA - The government asks the public to carry out a swab test and a quick test, especially those who are on vacation or traveling on vacation together this week. This is done to anticipate a spike in COVID-19 cases in the community.

"Testing should be carried out for those who are on a long holiday to travel. This should be done as an anticipatory screening step to ensure their health status," said Wiku Adisasmito, spokesman for the Task Force (Task Force) for handling COVID-19 in his press conference, Thursday, October 29.

Moreover, the government has emphasized that health checks or screening are mandatory for anyone who will travel in the midst of a pandemic like now. This has also been regulated through a regulation issued by the Ministry of Transportation.

In addition, to take precaution, local governments are also required to continue to actively increase COVID-19 testing in their areas, especially after leaving together at weekends.

"We continue to ask the local government to increase their testing efforts. In addition, the public must also do testing if they experience symptoms of COVID-19, this is an important collaboration," he said.

It is known that the government made 28 October and 30 October leave with the Prophet Muhammad SAW's birthday. So there is a long holiday for five days, from October 28 to November 1.

Previously, the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) released progress data on handling COVID-19 as of Thursday, October 29. Based on the examination of 34,317 specimens, 3,565 added positive cases of COVID-19. So that the total accumulated cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia since the first time this virus entered has reached 404,048 cases.

"Meanwhile, the number of recovered COVID-19 cases currently has increased by 3,985 people with a total accumulation of 329,778," data quoted from the Ministry of Health, Thursday, October 29.

Meanwhile, for death cases, the number increased by 89, so that the total accumulated number of patients who died was 13,701 cases.

The positivity rate in Indonesia is currently still not moving down from 14 percent, or to be precise, it is currently at 14.3 percent.

Meanwhile, the total number of specimens examined currently has reached 4,463,884 in which 4,381,397 specimens were examined by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method and the remaining 82,487 specimens were examined by the molecular rapid test (TCM) method.

Regarding the number of COVID-19 suspects in Indonesia, currently the number has reached 688,888 people. Currently, 502 districts / cities from 34 provinces have cases of COVID-19.