No PPKM But The Ministry Of Health Asks To Care To Protect Not Deleted, What Are Its Use Now?

The PeduliLindung application is part of the COVID-19 pandemic policy in Indonesia. (Between)

JAKARTA - The policy of implementing restrictions on community activities (PPKM) has been lifted. However, the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) asked the public not to abolish the PeduliLindung application.

Don't delete PeduliLindung. Some have removed PeduliLindung because PPKM has been revoked, later it will be deleted (if necessary) confused about having to download again. Remember there are still benefits," said Head of the Communication and Public Service Bureau of the Ministry of Health Siti Nadia Tarmizi in "Indonesia COVID-19 Surge Response (ICSR)" followed online, Thursday 26 January

Nadia said PeduliLindung could still help the community, in obtaining health services through telemedicine for people who were self-isolating (isoman) due to being infected with COVID-19.

In data on telemedicine services from the Ministry of Health from January 17 to December 31, 2022, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 patients reached 1,823,209 people. A total of 1,628,354 people received notification via WhatsApp.

Then 576,978 people from patients who contacted telemedicine. Where 542,840 people have received recipes for processing and are ready to be sent and 542,025 of them have received drug packages. Nadia stated that the number of telemedicine users will continue to grow and be recorded.

Telemedicine services have also reached 14 large areas in Indonesia and collaborated with around 17 health platforms. Since November 2022, patients can also choose one method of delivery or taking drugs either through package couriers at no cost or taken by online motorcycle taxis and patient guardians at the expense of each party.

Nadia continued, in addition to providing telemedicine services, data related to COVID-19 vaccination is also still provided in PeduliLindung. This helps the public to be more practical in showing their health data.

"PeduliLindungi is still useful for all of us. Although some malls do not require PeduliLindungi, but she can break the chain of transmission that positive people will not be able to enter public places and so on," he said in an intermediate statement.

Nadia emphasized that although the government had revoked PPKM and focused on passing the transition from a pandemic to an endemic, all developments in the COVID-19 indicators were still monitored, including the hospital occupancy rate (BOR), reproduction (Rt) of the virus to cases of death.

Maybe there are ordinary people infected with COVID-19, but don't die. Just like dengue fever that still exists, but don't let extraordinary events happen. This is the same pattern of infectious diseases," he said.

The Ministry of Health ensures that all 3T (testing, tracing, and treatment) activities, vaccination and health protocols remain the government's strategy in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The government also continues to sharpen genomic surveillance in laboratories so that they can find out each characteristic of the COVID-19 sub-variant to protect the public from infection of transmission.

"We have also expanded from 16 laboratories to 41 laboratories. This means that we continue to monitor the potential of other new sub-variants," he said.