COVID-19 Continues To Increase, Surabaya City Government Returns To 50 Percent Face-to-face Learning

Photo via Antara

JAKARTA - The Surabaya City Government has re-implemented 50 percent face-to-face learning (PTM) following the increasing number of positive COVID-19 cases.

Mayor of Surabaya Eri Cahyadi said that 50 percent PTM or eliminating two shifts of 100 percent PTM could be implemented starting this Thursday or Friday (4/2).

"Usually there are two 100 percent shifts, from now on I'll stop them. The mechanism is, one day in, one day not, there is only one 50 percent shift," said Eri Thursday, February 3.

According to Eri, this policy was taken following the number of active cases recorded in the data on the opponentcovid-19.surabaya.go.id page as of February 2, 2022, at 15.00 p.m. local time, a total of 587 people.

That number, according to Eri, will continue to creep up if mitigation is not carried out as soon as possible.

For now, he continued, Surabaya is still at 16.4 percent of the number of positive cases. If the rate is 20 percent per 100 thousand inhabitants, it could be that the area or city increases to Level 2. The city of Surabaya has Level 1 status, meaning that it is still below 20 percent.

Eri previously asked the Surabaya City Health Office to intensify tracking and testing to anticipate a spike in COVID-19 cases, especially the Omicron variant in Surabaya.

"If there is an increase, this happens because we have carried out massive 'tracing' to prevent the spread of COVID-19. will be a ticking time bomb," he said, quoted from Antara.

Learning from previous experiences, Eri did not want a spike in COVID-19 cases, especially when the Delta variant entered the city of Surabaya. According to him, this is caused by the city of Surabaya as a safe city.

"There was no swab hunter, mass swab, and no massive testing, it finally exploded. This is what I don't want, now we are massively testing and tracing, only then will we treat it," he said.