Vice President Asks Bali To Effectively Isolate COVID-19 Patients

JAKARTA - Vice President Ma'ruf Amin asked the Bali Provincial Government to make the integrated isolation more effective for COVID-19 patients in all districts and cities to reduce the number of transmission cases.

"About integrated isolation, to make it more effective. This is a good step, but it needs to be more effective," said Vice President Ma'ruf while chairing a coordination meeting with the Bali Province COVID-19 Handling Task Force (Satgas) online, quoted by Antara, Thursday, July 29.

The vice president hopes that the implementation of integrated isolation by the Bali Provincial Government can increase the number of patients recovering from COVID-19.

In the meeting which was also attended by the Governor of Bali Wayan Koster and local regents and mayors, the Vice President reminded all regional heads in Bali to accelerate the absorption of the COVID-19 handling budget in the regions.

"Don't let the absorption of the budget, especially for tackling COVID-19, be not absorbed optimally. This is an important issue," said the Vice President.

Meanwhile, Wayan Koster reported that the integrated isolation decision in Bali was taken because the number of active COVID-19 cases in the province was increasing with the dominance of household clusters.

However, he said, the integrated isolation effort was not optimal because the Task Force Team had difficulty inviting the public to undergo isolation in a place that had been prepared by the Bali Provincial Government.

"(We) have not been able to optimally lead residents who are at home to quarantine in a place that has been prepared by the provincial government as well as district and city governments," said Wayan.

To be able to encourage people to undergo integrated isolation, Wayan said he would involve members of the TNI and Polri.

"The centralized quarantine is led by the Regional Military Commander and the Regional Police Chief so that residents are more obedient in following the centralized quarantine, willing to move from the quarantine they are living in their own homes," he said.