Please Stay Calm, Isolation Services At The Hospital Still Have Plenty Of Room

JAKARTA - Spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Dr. Siti Nadia Tarmizi, said that the isolation service capacity in hospitals was still sufficient to accommodate COVID-19 patients, although the number of positive cases nationally was experiencing an upward trend.

"We see that the availability of isolation places in hospitals with the number of patients being isolated is still quite low," said Siti Nadia Tarmizi in a virtual press conference that was attended in Jakarta, Wednesday, February 16, quoted from Antara.

Until Tuesday (15/2), he said, patients being treated at hospitals nationally were still under control. The number of COVID-19 patients being hospitalized is in the position of 33 percent with the total number of intensive care beds being increased from 88.485 to 91.018 units.

One of these situations was reported from North Sumatra. From the number of cases of 637 patients, the number of occupied isolation provided by local hospitals reached 4.000 units.

DKI Jakarta out of a total of 8,408 cases, while the use of isolation beds is 8.418 from the availability of 15.313 isolation beds.

"The same goes for the provinces of West Java and Yogyakarta. If we look at several provinces where the isolation bed occupancy rate is more than 20 percent, the total capacity for isolation is still available," she said.

He said the Ministry of Health had also prepared a strategy for converting treatment beds in hospitals if the number of cases spiked in the next few days.

"If we add this conversion plan, it will add approximately 1.5 times the current availability," he said.

So far, he said, there are no areas with beds and intensive care occupancy exceeding 60 percent in Indonesia.

Based on the Ministry of Health's report until February 13, 2022, asymptomatic and mild patients who were hospitalized and mostly did not need oxygen therapy still dominated.

Of the 20.920 patients hospitalized, 4.037 of them were asymptomatic and 9.664 had mild symptoms. "This means that 65.49 percent of patients can be self-isolation (isoman) at home or in centralized isolation in a place provided by the government other than the hospital," said Siti Nadia Tarmizi.