Procurement Of COVID-19 Test Equipment Allegedly Problematic, Task Force: No Standard Handbook Since The Beginning

JAKARTA - Procurement of the COVID-19 real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test kit in Indonesia at the start of the pandemic was suspected of having a problem.

It was said that tens of hospitals returned hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 test kits to the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) because they could not be used.

In the investigation of Tempo Magazine together with Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) and friends, they found that there were allegations of state losses in the return of hundreds of thousands of RT-PCR COVID-19 test kits. The amount is around IDR 170 billion. This is due to inaccurate procurement of test kits.

Responding to this, Suryopratomo, a member of the Task Force for Handling COVID-19, admitted that all countries, in the early days of the pandemic, were still faced with ignorance of good handling of COVID-19.

"In the exotic situation in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, international institutions, be it the World Health Organization (WHO) or UNICEF, did not have a standard handle on how to handle COVID. All did it by trial and error," said Suryopratomo in BNPB Indonesia Youtube broadcast, Monday, March 15.

At the start of the pandemic, Suryopratomo admitted that his party was faced with a tense situation. health workers began to fall due to handling COVID-19. The only way is to procure PCR test kits.

Unfortunately, at that time there were only two countries that could produce PCR test reagents, namely China and Korea. The Task Force, which at that time was called the Task Force for the Acceleration of Handling COVID-19, had to procure a PCR test.

"Now there is a lot of discussions as if the task force carried out the procurement of PCR tests carelessly, did not conduct studies," said Suryopratomo.

"I said, what done by the Task Force team was oriented towards how as soon as possible we could control the transmission, as soon as possible to find out which members of the community were infected, so then isolation or quarantine could be carried out so as not to infect others," he continued.

Chronology of returning COVID-19 test kits

Chief expert of the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, M. Nasser, explained the chronology of one type of PCR test kit (reagent) under the brand Sansure. Initially, the Task Force/National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) considered the Sansure reagent to be very stable and also multiplex

That is, this reagent consists of two confirmed genes which can be worked out faster than the other reagents, and has good sensitivity and specificity.

From April to May 2020, the government will distribute to 88 laboratories in 31 provinces.

In fact, of those laboratories, there were a number of laboratories that could not work because of problems with the method of work, in which the dry and wet RNA extraction methods could be combined well.

"On August 13, 2020, it was decided in a coordination meeting with Indonesia's National Government Internal Auditor (BPKP) that all reagents which cannot be used are withdrawn and redistributed," said Nasser.

Until the end of 2020, the process of replacing the returned test kits left 12 laboratories, and until 2021 the redistribution had been completed.

"So, the request from Unhas Hospital for 25 thousand and Pangkalan Bun Hospital for 3 thousand cannot be fulfilled because the stock is not available," he concluded.