Epidemiologist: Decrease In The BOR Of Hospitals Is Positive News, But The Problem Is Many People Are Self-Isolation At Home

Dicky Budiman (YouTube screenshot Iluni UI)

JAKARTA - Australia's Griffith University epidemiologist Dicky Budiman said the decline in hospital bed occupancy rate (BOR) was indeed positive news amid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, he reminded many people who actually chose to self-isolate at home.

"We welcome the decrease in BOR to show positive news in the hospital. But the main problem is that many of these cases are in homes, in the community," said Dicky in an online discussion entitled Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Emergency PPKM in Handling the COVID-19 Pandemic which was broadcast on YouTube. ILUNI UI, Saturday, August 7th.

He mentioned that many people in the country actually choose not to go to health facilities when they are sick. This, said Dicky, was strengthened by data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) in 2020 which stated that 72.19 percent of Indonesians chose to self-medicate at home.

With this condition, Dicky predicts that people are actually more self-isolating at home than checking themselves into hospitals or centralized isolation places when exposed to COVID-19.

"This means that the success of disease control programs in Indonesia for decades is not in the curative aspect, but also in the existence of programs that reach the community," he said.

Furthermore, this epidemiologist reminded the government that it must be serious in dealing with COVID-19, especially the Delta variant. Because, if the handling is wrong and positive cases are getting out of control, it is not impossible that there will be new variants resulting from viral mutations.

"This means that every policy direction that is promotive, preventive must also be able to control the existing variants and prevent the emergence of new variants that can change conditions for the worse," said Dicky.

Not only that, but he also asked the government to implement the best strategy when implementing restrictions on community activities, including strengthening tracing, testing, treatment, or 3T.

"If the main strategy is not strengthened, namely 3T plus isolating, then how long the restrictions are carried out, there will be a lockdown trap or restriction trap that will burden all of us socially, economically and politically," he concluded.