Ministry Of Health Asks Local Government To Detect Variants Of All Specimens Of Positive Cases Of COVID-19

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JAKARTA - The Ministry of Health has instructed local governments, both governors, regents, and mayors to increase efforts to detect COVID-19 variants such as Omicron from positive cases by examining variants of all positive confirmed cases.

This detection was carried out by examining the RT PCE using the S-gene target failure (SGTS) and whole genome sequencing (WGS) methods. The instructions are contained in the SE of the Ministry of Health Number SR.01.06/II/592/2022 concerning Strengthening the Detection of Cases of the SAR-CoV-2 Virus Variant from COVID-19.

In the SE, all findings of positive confirmed cases of COVID-19 were examined by SGTF PCR. The recording and reporting of the results of the SGTF examination is carried out through the TC-19 New All Record (NAR) application.

Meanwhile, the criteria for positive cases whose specimens will be examined are all COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized with severe symptoms or died. Then, the WGS examination was also carried out on tracing results from positive cases who were hospitalized with severe symptoms or died. and COVID-19 cluster cases which have more than 25 cases.

Furthermore, WGS was also carried out on people with a history of reinfection, participation in vaccine trials, children under 18 years in areas where cases of children have increased, as well as international travellers.

As is known, as of January 30, there were an addition of 12,422 new positive cases in Indonesia. Active cases increased by 9,163 cases, so that currently there are 61,718 cases who are still being treated or isolated. Thus the SE Ministry of Health quoted Monday, January 31.