Ministry Of Health: Need To Wait For WHO Official Directions To Revoke COVID-19 Pandemic Status

PIXABAY ILLUSTRATION

JAKARTA - Spokesperson for the COVID-19 Vaccination of the Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, stated that all countries need to wait for official directions from the World Health Organization (WHO) to be able to revoke the status of the COVID-19 pandemic in their respective regions.

"Pandemic declared globally by WHO and we belong to the global community. After all, we cannot, as a global community, declare that Indonesia is out of the pandemic," Nadia said, quoted by Antara, Thursday, February 24.

Responding to when Indonesia entered an endemic period, Nadia said it could not be decided unilaterally. The government still needs to monitor the pandemic situation further, including paying attention to various indicators in handling COVID-19.

The government is currently trying to improve the situation by reducing the rate of transmission of COVID-19 in the community and ensuring that a number of indicators such as the death rate and hospital bed occupancy (BOR) do not increase significantly.

According to Nadia, what the country can do to get to the end of the epidemic is to implement policies that balance health interests as well as economic interests, so that Indonesia can grow financially. One of them is by imposing the Enforcement of Restrictions on Community Activities (PPKM).

“For example, to balance the interests of health and the economy. We are quite confident that Indonesia can together with the whole community lead to an endemic," he said.

However, Nadia admits that the PPKM policy can reduce the rate of case transmission if all local governments have a sense of ownership to play a role in regulating and supervising the rate of mobility and activities in their area.

“We are a big country, the variation is big with decentralization. There must be a sense of ownership from the local government in handling this pandemic. Don't let the mobility policy be limited at the center, but in the regions the same thing doesn't happen," he said.

With a sense of ownership from each regional government, if at any time the state re-implements emergency PPKM or other policies, interventions can be well intertwined and all communities can understand these rules through risk communication built to suppress the surge in COVID-19 cases.

Nadia emphasized that the government is confident that it can bring Indonesia into an endemic situation when it sees conditions that can be controlled as it is today.

"We are heading there and back, as I said, that we are quite confident of course with this situation," said Nadia.