Task Force: New Cases Of COVID-19 Reach Thousands A Day As Tests Get More Massive

Illustrated (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - The community is living a new normal life in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak. At the same time, the addition of COVID-19 cases in one day reached a new record, namely 1,240 people. Many think that Indonesia is not ready to carry out the new normalcy because the number of cases is increasing.

However, the COVID-19 task force has denied this. The team of experts from the Task Force for the Acceleration of Covid-19 Handling, Dewi Nur Aisyah, asked the public not to just look at the number of cases to conclude how severe the COVID-19 outbreak in Indonesia was.

Dewi said, the main factor causing the curve of COVID-19 cases to increase is because the government has run more massive examination tests.

"We have to see the increase in number because of what. The easiest thing, we see now is that the increase in the number of positive cases is getting higher, because indeed the number of examinations is getting higher," said Dewi in a discussion at Graha BNPB, East Jakarta, Monday, June 15.

Based on data held by the Task Force for the Acceleration of Handling COVID-19, as of Sunday, June 14, the government was able to carry out 18,760 COVID-19 tests in one day, both RT-PCR and molecular rapid tests (TCM). The government also has 110 PCR laboratories, 82 TCM laboratories, and 222 networking laboratories.

Meanwhile, there is a comparison of the number of tests performed, if you look at the conditions last week. As of June 7, the government conducted 11,924 COVID-19 tests in one day. The government has 103 PCR laboratories, 68 TCM laboratories, and 195 networking laboratories.

"At the beginning, we had a target of examining 10,000 per day. Now, it increases to 20 thousand per day. So, when it reaches twenty thousand per day, then surely we will also see an increase in the number of positive cases," explained Dewi.

He said, what must be considered in seeing the increase in cases is the positivity rate of COVID-19. That is, the percentage of the ratio of the total number of positive test results and the number of specimens examined.

If you look at the data, the daily positivity rate does not change significantly. As of June 7, the positivity rate stood at 11.6 percent. That is, from 100 percent of the COVID-19 tests, only 11.6 percent showed positive results. Meanwhile, on June 14 yesterday, the positivity rate was still 11.9 percent.

"If the numbers are more or less the same, that means there is no difference even though the numbers are getting bigger. But if for example it turns out that the numbers are high but the number of examinations is also high. So, when looking at the numbers, don't be surprised," he concluded.