Task Force Says COVID-19 Patients Don't Need To Know What Variants Are Exposed, Just Positive-Negative Results

ILLUSTRA TION BY VOI

JAKARTA - Spokesperson for the COVID-19 Task Force, Wiku Adisasmito, said that COVID-19 patients do not need to know what variant they were exposed to when the PCR test results came out.

Wiku said that it was enough for people who were exposed to know that they were positive or negative for COVID-19 from the results of the PCR test.

"For now, the most important thing is to know whether the status is positive or negative, and a PCR test is enough," said Wiku in a virtual press conference, Friday, February 4.

Most importantly, the COVID-19 patient must immediately self-isolate if he has no symptoms or has mild symptoms and is hospitalized if his symptoms are moderate, severe, or critical.

"Whatever the variant, the most important thing is early anticipation so it doesn't spread in the community," he said.

Meanwhile, according to Wiku, the examination of variants is a follow-up examination after the PCR test conducted by the government using the Whole Genome Sequencing method for epidemiological purposes or mapping of new variants.

"Knowing more about variants is a further step and will be prioritized for cases with suspected variant-like symptoms according to WHO guidelines and experts with the aim of knowing the distribution of variants as a basis for prioritizing the distribution of SGTF tools or reagents as well as intensification to implement WGS," explained Wiku. .

It is known, as of today, there are 32,211 new COVID-19 cases and an accumulation of 4,446,694 cases. Meanwhile, active cases rose by 24,979 to 140,254 cases.