Minister Of Health: Overseas Travelers Increase In All Entrances In The Last Week

ILLUSTRATION/SOEKARNO-HATTA AIRPORT/DOK ANTARA

JAKARTA - Minister of Health, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, said that the number of travelers passing through Indonesia's entrances has increased over the past week either by land, air, or land.

"In the past week, there has been a fairly high increase in foreign travelers at all entrances", said the Minister of Health in a press conference broadcast on the Presidential Secretariat's YouTube, Monday, December 20.

From this condition, the government continues to try to carry out polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and whole-genome sequencing. This, said Budi, must be done to prevent the entry of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in the country.

As a result, from the test, it turns out that the positivity rate of travelers who enter from land and sea routes is actually higher than air.

"We have observed all of our PCR tests and genome sequencing, it turns out that sea entrances and land entrances have a much higher positivity rate than air entrances", said the former Deputy Minister of SOEs.

"Therefore, with the help of the TNI (Army), National Police and the Ministry of Home Affairs, we will strengthen the surveillance and quarantine processes at sea and land entrances", Budi added.

In addition to carrying out whole genome sequencing, the government through the Ministry of Health has also taken other steps to prevent the entry of the Omicron variant in the country from international travelers. One of them is by using S Gene Target Failure (STGF)-based PCR, which can detect Omicron variants faster.

Although not 100 percent accurate as whole genome sequencing, this STGF-based PCR test can be a marker. Moreover, the time required to test one specimen is only about five to six hours.

"The PCR test with STGF functions as a marker, so it's not 100 percent like WGS, but it is most likely to detect Omicron within four to six hours. Meanwhile, WGS takes three to five days", said the Minister of Health.

This series of steps is deemed necessary because the current cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in the country are imported, not local transmissions. Including, the positive case experienced by N, a janitor at Wisma Atlet COVID-19 Emergency Hospital Kemayoran, Jakarta.

According to the Minister of Health, N contracted the Omicron variant of COVID-19 from a woman from Indonesia who had just returned from Nigeria on 27 November.

"Therefore, we need to tighten our foreign arrivals and our quarantine so that we can protect cases coming from Nigeria, coming from London, and coming from Guyana, the United States", he concluded.