COVID-19 Cases Continue To Spike, The Government Must Guarantee The Safety Of Health Workers And Oxygen Supplies

JAKARTA - Muhammadiyah Central Executive, encourages the government to ensure the safety of health workers and ensure oxygen supply is available. This is so that the death rate due to COVID-19 can be reduced.

"The higher mortality rate illustrates that patients with moderate-to-severe conditions are also high, as a consequence the need for oxygen is increasing very rapidly", said Deputy Chair of the Muhammadiyah COVID-19 Command Center (MCCC) Aldila Al Arfah, quoted by Antara, Tuesday, July 13.

Aldila said that if these two things are not a priority for today's treatment, it is feared that more victims will fall due to COVID-19, both health workers and the community, as well as the handling of patients in collapsed hospitals.

Based on data from the Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) until July 8, there were 458 doctors who died, in July there were 35 people. That figure has not been added to the other health workers who have fallen.

Meanwhile, on the citizen side, on July 11, the highest death rate was recorded based on daily data from the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, reaching 1.007 people. In total, the death toll until yesterday reached 67.355 people since March 2020.

According to him, the additional cases are patients detected through PCR. Meanwhile, there are many more patients who are self-isolating or outside the hospital who suffer from COVID-19 based on clinical conditions and rapid antigens.

Currently, said Aldila, the situation that must be given special attention is the lack of oxygen and other health commodities. Many hospitals today complain of an uncertain supply of oxygen.

"Hospitals have coordinated with oxygen supplier partners and the local health office, even now many hospitals are filling their own oxygen cylinders to refill/refill oxygen cylinders", he said.

Many hospitals have also made efforts to extend the life of oxygen stocks, by disaster triage, reducing supplies to patients evenly, and so on.

"However, such a high number of cases has resulted in inadequate things being done by the hospital. On the other hand, medicines for the treatment of COVID-19 have begun to be limited, both on the market and in hospitals. If things are not intervened adequately, then Health Services in Indonesia will collapse", said Aldila.