Cases Increase, Government Add 30 Percent Bed Capacity For COVID-19 Patients

Chairman of KPCPEN Airlangga Hartato (Diah Ayu VOI via screenshot)

JAKARTA - Chairman of the Committee for Handling COVID-19 and National Economic Recovery (KPCPEN) Airlangga Hartato said the government would increase the capacity of isolation care beds and ICU for COVID-19 patients in the near future.

The capacity of this COVID-19 special care bed will be increased by 30 percent from the previous one in each province. Because, the increasing cases make the use of the bed getting thinner.

"The government encourages optimization of the bed, both at the government, regional public hospitals and private hospitals. The allocation for handling COVID-19 is increased to 30 percent," said Airlangga in the Presidential Secretariat Youtube broadcast, Monday, January 4. .

According to Airlangga, the Minister of Health will coordinate the increase in bed capacity by converting public care rooms into special COVID-19 treatments.

The plan to allocate public care beds to specifically for COVID-19 is carried out in state-owned hospitals, regional public hospitals, and a number of private hospitals.

In addition, the government will also increase the number of special COVID-19 health workers. This follows the plan to increase the bed capacity of isolation patients and the ICU for COVID-19.

"The Ministry of Health will increase the number of health workers. The target is 10,000, with especially increasing the number of nurses of 7,900 people from 1,141 health facilities," said Airlangga.

"Then, strengthening the implementation of COVID-19 management, especially in non-referral places. Then, the government continues to encourage increased surveillance, both tracking and isolation tests," he continued.

For information, the number of active COVID-19 cases in Indonesia as of January 3 in Indonesia reached 110,679 cases. Active cases are people who have confirmed positive and are still being treated or are in self-isolation.

Spokesperson for the COVID-19 Handling Task Force Wiku Adisasmito said the average use of isolation beds in Indonesia as of December 27 was 62.6 percent, while ICU was used at 55.6 percent.

However, this figure is not evenly distributed across regions. Several provinces with the highest utilization of beds in isolation rooms and ICU rooms were West Java, Yogyakarta, Banten, East Java, Central Java, DKI, and South Sulawesi, with usage above 75 percent.

"The current challenge in the context of health services is the increase in the number of cases, the availability of medical facilities, equipment and logistics, as well as the increased transmission of COVID-19 to health workers which has the potential to cause delays in other essential health services," explained Wiku.