The Sloping Curve Of The Spread Of COVID-19 Cannot Be Seen From Daily Data

JAKARTA - Chairman of the Expert Team for the Task Force for the Acceleration of Handling COVID-19, Wiku Adisasmito, explained that the term gentle curve that is often conveyed when the government explains the conditions of the spread of COVID-19 in Indonesia, cannot be seen in one day. He said, the curve must be seen on a weekly basis.

"So actually what is meant by this sloping curve is a trend that cannot be seen daily but weekly," Wiku said in a press conference broadcast on the Presidential Secretariat YouTube account, Monday, May 11.

The reason is that this trend can be seen from the curve formed through data on the addition of new COVID-19 cases every day. So, to make it clearer, this data must first be collected for one week.

"If the weekly trend is decreasing over time, it doesn't have to be a lot but continues to decline. That is what is called sloping. The curve is not sloping, but the context is that the rate of addition is decreasing," he said.

Wiku added, until now, cases of the spread of COVID-19 in several areas, such as DKI Jakarta, West Java and other provinces, tend to fluctuate.

In DKI Jakarta, for example, it was high in April, then decreased before finally rising again. He said the increase in this number was due to the increasing number of specimen testing through the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. From this example, continued Wiku, he cannot read the spread curve only from daily data.

In addition, he continued, to read the spread curve of this virus, one cannot only look at the number of spreads at the national level. But you also have to look at the regional level.

"This is what should be a navigation tool. One data is very important to show the trend. Later, when some economic activity is opened, the basis must be seen from the regional press. Not only national," he said.

Previously, the Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture (Menko PMK) Muhadjir Effendy said cases of the spread of COVID-19 in Indonesia since May 7 have continued to decline, although not drastically.

"The state of the COVID-19 map as of May 7, there is a tendency that the number of cases occurring in Indonesia has decreased, although not too drastically," said Muhadjir in an online press conference broadcast on the Presidential Secretariat account, Friday, May 8.

This is because, he said, the addition of new cases in Indonesia did not reach 500. This is what worries the decline in cases of spread. The government hopes that in the future this case will continue to decline.

"We are grateful because our average case rate is still low and it can be seen that the cases per day are below 500. Meanwhile, the recovery is getting higher, it is closer to 300 per day and the mortality rate is not increasing drastically," he explained.

It's just that, a day after Muhadjir's claim, the government actually said there were 533 new cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia on Saturday, May 9.

Recently, according to the government, this massive increase occurred after specimen testing using the PCR method was increasingly carried out and prioritized those who were included in the category of people under surveillance and people without symptoms (OTG).