The Spread Of The Delta Variant Of COVID-19 Makes The 320 Thousand Testing Rate Per Day Difficult To Reach The Target

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JAKARTA - Spokesperson for the COVID-19 Task Force, Wiku Adisasmito, admitted that until now the government has not been able to carry out testing (testing) according to the target.

When the Emergency Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM) takes effect, the government has a target of conducting as many as 324,283 tests a day. However, unfortunately it has never been achieved.

Wiku explained that the challenges related to testing were related to the increasing number of daily cases. One of them is caused by the emergence of the Delta variant which is more contagious.

In fact, there are currently 661 cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19 in Java and Bali.

"The easily contagious characteristics of the Delta variant put considerable pressure on health care facilities and laboratories, as well as various other elements, causing potential delays in recording," said Wiku in a virtual press conference, Thursday, July 22. Meanwhile, said Wiku, the target was National vaccine-related issues put forward the priority principle, namely prioritizing suspects and close contacts of confirmed cases.

"This aims to reduce the national positivity rate until the third week of July to reach 28.27 percent, both PCR and antigen methods are optimized under these conditions," he said.

However, Wiku said that Indonesia had reached 4 times the testing standard targeted by WHO as of July 3. WHO recommends testing as much as 1:1,000 population per week. This is done to achieve the desired target time as soon as possible.

"In order to make it happen, the central government is committed to supporting local governments in achieving the 3T target. There must be cooperation between each region to achieve a specific testing target ratio in each region, to achieve the testing target of at least 15 contacts per one confirmation case," he explained.