Makassar Mayor Danny Pomanto Reactivates COVID-19 Detectors

MAKASSAR - Mayor of Makassar Moh Ramdhan Pomanto (Danny Pomanto) immediately reactivated the tracing program or tracking of people who were confirmed positive by deploying the COVID-19 Detector Team again.

The team was sent to the houses of residents who had previously had polemics, involving students from the health faculty and analysts.

"We are starting to retrain 100 health analysts who will accompany the Detector team in collaboration with the Covid Hunter team. If 100 (analysts) here are added 150 people from the Faculty of Public Health, it will certainly be effective," said Ramdhan on the sidelines of a visit at the Bulog Panaikang warehouse, Makassar. , South Sulawesi, quoted by Antara, Monday, August 23.

Danny Pomanto emphasized that it was time for the Detector team to step down, because it would be easy to detect people who were exposed, both asymptomatic and symptomatic. This is aimed at recovering and accelerating the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

His party has also evaluated input and criticism from the public and academics regarding the personalization of the Detector team, so that improvements to its Human Resources have been carried out.

"Now the detectors have to go down because we want to control (the transmission) from house to house. We have evaluated, for this time the Detector team who will go down must wait for the registration of the PKM post," he said.

The plan is that the Detector team will begin to be deployed after attending a series of training for a month, then next week in early September 2021, after being fully prepared, they will be returned to their respective Command Posts that have been prepared to carry out their duties.

"Our detectors are retraining at their respective posts. If there are more analysts, the on-the-road antigen swab test program will certainly increase in points. So far, more positive people have been netted from outside Makassar," explained the mayor for these two periods.

In fact, in addition to carrying out tracing, Danny added, they will also be involved in distributing Social Assistance (Bansos) the main ingredients of the Level 4 Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM) program.

"The detectors will jointly distribute basic food items as well as provide and examine residents. We will also launch a new vaccination movement, while waiting for the vaccine to arrive. The vaccination achievement in Makassar has reached 45 percent. Now we are waiting for a vaccine of 200 thousand viral copies, or the equivalent of two million doses," Danny said.

Regarding the circular regarding the amount of costs incurred by the community for the Reserve Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test, he said, he followed the Central Government's rules and had signed the Mayor's Circular. It is known that the PCR cost after being revised for Java and Bali is Rp. 495 thousand, and outside Java is Rp. 525 thousand.