Hospitals In Bangkalan Had Panicked Over The Spike In COVID-19

ILLUSTRATION/PIXABAY

JAKARTA - The head of the Bangkalan Nunuk Christian Regional General Hospital (RSUD) admitted that health workers had panicked when facing a surge in COVID-19 cases in his area. Currently, there are 328 active cases in Bangkalan.

Nunuk said that the isolation beds and the COVID-19 special ICU in Bangkalan, Madura were fully filled on Saturday, June 5.

"This makes us panic because our ER is full. Then, the inpatient room that we provide in isolation is also full," Nunuk said in a virtual discussion on the Ministry of Communications and Information TV's Youtube, Thursday, June 10.

The problem that causes health workers to panic is the surge in the number of COVID-19 beds at the Bangkalan Hospital, which are already fully filled. On average, incoming COVID-19 patients experience a fairly bad condition.

"There are very few who are mildly ill. So, on average, patients who come to our hospital are a bit late," said Nunuk.

Until finally, the Bangkalan Hospital temporarily closed their emergency room. This is done to stabilize the condition of handling COVID-19 in hospitals.

Moreover, there are already 10 health workers, 17 hospital administration employees who have contracted COVID-19. One doctor among those exposed died.

"On Saturday, we announced that our emergency room was temporarily closed because there were some patients who died that could not be evacuated," he said.

Regarding the spike in cases, Nunuk admitted that his party could not confirm that the increase in cases was caused by the transmission of the new variant of COVID-19.

He said the variant of the B117 virus from England found in Indonesian migrant workers (PMI) who had just returned to Bangkalan had been handled properly, so it is not certain that the explosion of cases was caused by the variant named alpha.

"So far there has been no statement stating that it came from Bangkalan, the British variant came from PMI, yes, TKI who came from abroad who came, but they have been isolated, and have tested negative 3 times and were declared cured and then returned to their respective homes. -each," he explained.

What is clear, the spike in cases of the corona virus in Bangkalan occurred because compliance with the implementation of the public health protocol was still low.

"Public awareness about the procedure is still low, the use of masks is still low in rural and urban areas, this is also one of the causes of this spike," he added.