Ministry Of Health Called All Close Contact Of Case B117 As Negative COVID-19

Director General of Prevention and Control of Direct Communicable Diseases (P2PML) of the Ministry of Health Siti Nadia Tarmizi (Photo: Screenshot)

JAKARTA - Director General of Prevention and Control of Direct Communicable Diseases (P2PML) of the Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, said that the government has followed up on the six cases of the new variant of COVID-19 under the name B117.

Nadia said, all close contacts of the six B117 cases had PCR examinations with whole genome sequencing (WGS) to detect new variants of this virus. As a result, all close contacts were declared not to have contracted the corona virus.

"We have taken all the (close) contact samples of these six cases and we have also examined them. All are negative, we have been asked if previously suffered from illness, but none of them were positive," Nadia said in a YouTube broadcast of BNPB Indonesia, Friday, March 12.

Then, Nadia explained that currently most WGS examinations are mostly carried out by laboratories in tertiary institutions.

There are 17 labs spread out divided according to regions for examination. Apart from Balitbangkes, there is also LBM Eijkman, there is Labkesda Jabar, LIPI, BPPT, UI, UGM, UNS, UIN Jakarta, UNPAD, ITB, UNAIR, UPN Veteran Jakarta, and Tanjung Pura University.

Currently, the Ministry of Health and Kemenristek / National Agency for Research and Innovation are working together to increase the number of samples for whole genome sequencing.

"It is hoped that there will be the development of this lab network to later help there may be other universities or other potential ones for the development of WGS," he said.

Previously, Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin said that there had been six cases of the new variant of COVID-19 that had entered Indonesia. In February, there were two cases of Indonesian citizens from Karawang who had just returned from Saudi Arabia.

Then, four other cases were found one case in Palembang, South Sumatra on 11 January; one case in South Kalimantan on 6 January; one case in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan on January 12; and one case in Medan, North Sumatra on 28 January.

Budi said that these four cases had been tested and received positive results for COVID-19 with the results of genome sequencing for the new strain of COVID-19 B117 from England.

"Currently they have recovered and have come out (from isolation). For the follow-up, we are conducting surveillance of their close contacts and we are chasing them so that we can test," said Budi.