Duh, COVID-19 Patient Beds Are Only Half Of Current Active Cases

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JAKARTA - Spokesperson for the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, Wiku Adisasmito, said there is an imbalance between the number of active cases and the number of isolation beds and the COVID-19 ICU in health facilities.

Wiku said, there are currently 165,540 active cases or people who are still confirmed positive for COVID-19. Meanwhile, the number of special COVID-19 care beds is only around 81 thousand.

"The beds we have are only half of the cases. In addition, the number of health workers is limited to provide intensive health services," Wiku said in the Presidential Secretariat Youtube broadcast, Thursday, January 28.

Wiku admitted that the government is working to increase the number of beds in the COVID-19 referral hospital and the number of health workers.

The Ministry of Health has asked areas with red zones or at high risk to increase the number of isolation beds by at least 40 percent and ICUs by at least 20 percent.

Then, for areas in the yellow zone, the city is advised to convert beds as much as 30 percent and isolation rooms as much as 20 percent of the existing capacity.

Then, the green zone area was asked to convert 25 percent isolation beds and 15 percent ICU.

However, said Wiku, no matter how many beds and health workers were added, it would not be enough to handle COVID-19 cases without involvement from the community.

"The only way to deal with this condition is to reduce the number of transmission that occurs in the community with health protocols," said Wiku.