DIY Regional Government Increases Testing To Reduce COVID-19 Case Rate

ILLUSTRATION/PIXABAY

YOGYAKARTA - The Yogyakarta Special Region Government ensures that it is still increasing testing and tracing or checking and tracking to reduce the rate of transmission of COVID-19 in this province.

"We do more testing by increasing the laboratory capacity, then we add antigen tests because one of the factors to reduce the positivity rate is the number of testing," said Regional Secretary (Sekda) DIY Kadarmanta Baskara Aji at the Kepatihan Complex, Yogyakarta, quoted by Antara, Tuesday, August 3rd.

Aji said that the average number of tests in DIY reached 6,000 per day which was carried out through polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which has been increased in capacity.

"Our PCR capability has reached more than 6,000 per day after we added several tools. But if later the tracing results require us to be more than 6,000, we will use antigens," he said.

Regarding the number of testing, which based on the report on August 2, 2021, had decreased to 3,302, Aji explained that it depended on the results of tracing or tracking cases in the field.

"If the tracing results don't show a positive result, it's useless for us to do the test," he said.

Meanwhile, Spokesperson for the DIY Regional Government for Handling COVID-19 Berty Murtiningsih said the decline in testing could be due to many factors. One of them, the number of close contacts are few.

"It could be that there are indeed many cases but few close contacts were found, it could also be that the tracing results were not all tested, it could also be because on Sunday the tracing was minimal," he said.