COVID-19 Cases Soared Drastically, Hospitals Began To Be Overwhelmed By Accepting Patients

JAKARTA - The Indonesian Hospital Association (PERSI) said that hospitals are currently starting to be overwhelmed by accepting COVID-19 patients. This condition occurred after the number of COVID-19 cases continued to increase in the last three days. In fact, the addition of cases reached 12,906 on Saturday, June 19.

Secretary-General of Indonesian Hospital Association, Lia G Partakusuma, said the daily trend compiled from the Ministry of Health's data did indeed seem to show a significant increase. According to her, this increase should be observed.

"From June 15 to 19 although it seems a little but 8 thousand, 9 thousand, 12 thousand. But it really must be observed and we consider this as the second spike from the time when we or Indonesia experienced the COVID-19 pandemic", she said in a virtual discussion, Sunday, June 20.

Lia said actually almost all hospitals provide capacity for those exposed to COVID-19. However, the addition of this case has made it difficult for hospitals to accept COVID-19 patients.

"But we have limitations, namely that there are areas with few health facilities and many cases, so we are starting to be overwhelmed by receiving COVID-19 patients", she said.

There are 3,039 hospitals in Indonesia. 1,976 of them are registered as members of Persi. Of this number, he said, there were 904 hospitals that received a decree from the Ministry of Health and the local provincial government that became COVID-19 referral hospitals.

"But the latest data that sent COVID-19 claims turned out to be more than 2,000 hospitals, so this is indeed a very helpful addition to hospitals in Indonesia to deal with COVID-19", continued.

Currently, Lia said, there is a lot of information in the community stating that hospitals are full, such as in Surabaya, Bandung, or other areas. According to her, based on the report received by her party, the information circulating in the community is the same.

"Hospitals reporting to us are actually the same, hospital capacity is currently running low", she said.

Bed availability

Based on data from the Ministry of Health as of June 19, Lia said, there are several provinces that clearly show a bed occupancy rate (BOR) or the level of availability of beds in hospitals of more than 80 percent. Among them are red zone areas such as DKI Jakarta and West Java.

Then, Banten, Central Java, and Yogyakarta showed BOR availability levels between 60 to 80 percent or categorized as yellow zone.

"So if we go back into the city/regency, it turns out that many have entered the red zone or the BOR ranges from 80-100 percent. We will see in Sumatra, Java, Bali, Kalimantan, NTB, NTT, Maluku, Papua", she said.

In general, said Lia, the increase in the number of BOR availability is high and is increasing slowly. On May 13, 2021, it showed the lowest number of COVID-19 cases in the country. However, now the numbers are increasing again.

"We can't deny that since May 13, we have the lowest number of COVID-19 cases. Now, it's slowly increasing even though nationally it seems that it doesn't or has not reached 81,174 beds, but this capacity is continuously filled and we see that in each province This data will be different", she said.

According to Lia, in Jakarta and its surroundings, these patients always go to big hospitals. Meanwhile, in this small hospital, the BOR is still low because patients go to a large hospital.

"Even now what we are worried about has begun to appear at the referral level. So usually patients will go directly to hospitals they know", she said.