COVID-19 Cases Decrease, Epidemiologist Predicts More And More Areas To Implement Level 1 PPKM

JAKARTA - The implementation of Level 1-4 Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM) in Java-Bali and outside Java-Bali ends today. Tonight, the government will announce the extension of the PPKM.

An epidemiologist from Griffith University Australia, Dicky Budiman, predicts that the government will add districts/cities that apply Level 1 PPKM as the loosest level.

Currently, it is stated that there are 9 regions that have implemented Level 1 PPKM in Java-Bali, namely districts/cities in East Java Province. Meanwhile, currently, the majority of regions are still implementing Level 2 and 3 PPKM.

"Level 1 can already be achieved in East Java in particular. In the future, there will be more for the Java region, which will lead to level 1," said Dicky when confirmed, Monday, September 20.

Level 1 PPKM is experienced in areas where the number of positive cases of COVID-19 is less than 20 people per 100.000 population per week. Then, hospitalization at the hospital is less than 5 people per 100.000 population per week, and the death rate is less than 1 person per 100.000 population in the area.

Dicky considers that the implementation of leveling-based PPKM is enough to help Indonesia deal with the COVID-19 pandemic so that cases are more sloping. Evidently, currently COVID-19 in Indonesia is improving even though a number of countries are experiencing the third wave of the coronavirus.

"If last July PPKM was able to prevent the worst-case scenario, now PPKM can prevent and reverse the potential third wave of cases. Hopefully, this will not happen. However, we still have to anticipate this and that is the importance of PPKM," he explained.

Currently, active cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia are below the 100 thousand marks as before the spike in cases, to be exact, as many as 60.949.

Daily cases as of September 19 increased by 2.234 cases with an accumulation of 4.190.763 cases. Then, healing increased by 6.168 cases with an accumulation of 3.989.326 cases. Meanwhile, deaths increased by 145 cases and a total of 140.468 cases.

This week, the percentage of positive results from the COVID-19 examination or the weekly positivity rate for people has decreased to 2.19 percent. This means that the results of PPKM are starting to improve.

In addition, there have been no reports of COVID-19 clusters from the implementation of limited face-to-face learning (PTM) in schools which started a few weeks ago.

"Other good news from the implementation of PPKM is that the implementation of school openings is carried out in stages by also referring to the indicators that have been carried out. I see that in Java it is relatively very disciplined, so at this time we have not found any reports of the COVID-19 cluster," he concluded.