Erick Thohir: Discipline Of Health Protocols In Offices Is Weakening, Many Are Stubborn Not Wearing Masks

Minister of BUMN, Erick Thohir. (Photo by: Setkab)

JAKARTA - The office cluster is in the third position as the group that has the highest contributor to COVID-19 cases in DKI Jakarta. In fact, the office cluster contributed 2,307 cases or 8.47 percent.

Chairman of the Executive Committee for Handling COVID-19 and National Economic Recovery, Erick Thohir spoke about this. According to Erick, this happened because the discipline in carrying out health protocols was weakened, especially regarding the use of masks.

Given that there is no COVID-19 vaccine, said Erick, the public actually knows that one of the savers from spreading the virus is wearing a mask when outside the home.

However, Erick said, sometimes when in a familiar environment, people's discipline weakens. Especially when hanging out with relatives who are considered close and don't have symptoms of COVID-19.

"One of the increased cases is in restaurants and offices. Why is this? Many people enter the office when they feel close and know when they open their masks, or when they eat with friends they open their masks," he said, in a video conference with journalists, Wednesday, September 2.

Erick invited the public to be more disciplined in carrying out health protocols. This is because various programs for handling the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will not run smoothly if they are not supported by the discipline of implementing health protocols.

"The health program cannot run well if the public health protocol is not disciplined, this is the key. We hope the community will be a part of success for this," he said.

For your information, clusters of the spread of COVID-19 in office environments have appeared in several areas. In East Java, for example, until mid-July there were reports of COVID-19 transmission in 20 office clusters with 272 positive cases.

Then, the same case emerged in Bandung. After testing 1,265 people at the West Java Governor's Office at the end of July, it was found that 40 people had tested positive for COVID-19. Meanwhile, in East Kalimantan, there were 61 positive cases from four clusters of government offices and oil and gas workers in Samarinda.

Meanwhile, there are many more cases in Jakarta. The DKI Jakarta Health Office noted that as of August 9, there were 166 offices that were clusters of COVID-19 transmission with 1,081 positive cases.

Before the transition to large-scale social restrictions (PSBB), positive cases of COVID-19 from the office cluster in the DKI Jakarta area were reported only 43 cases. This very significant increase in cases occurred since the commencement of the transitional PSBB on 4 June.