Jakarta (ANTARA) – Spokesperson for the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, Wiku Adisasmito, has urged regional administrations to increase the number of COVID-19 command posts at the village level to assist the first handling of patients.
“One of the important roles in the first handling of residents affected by COVID-19 is (played by) neighborhood units (RT) and community units (RW) administrators. During this pandemic, the RT/RW are helping village and community health centers (Puskesmas) officials to handle COVID-19,” he said at a press conference at Graha BNPB, monitored virtually from Jakarta on Thursday.
RTs and RWs are playing a role in monitoring and registering cases as well as monitoring compliance with health protocols and recording and supporting vaccination programs, he added.
The role of RTs and RWs must be supported through good coordination with other elements, he said.
It is important that there is a command post (Posko) at the village level to serve as a liaison between various elements of the community and a coordinator who can report on performance, Adisasmito said. “Unfortunately, there are still many villages in Indonesia that have not established (COVID-19) command posts. As of July 25, 2021, only 27 percent of villages in Indonesia have formed such command posts,” Adisasmito noted.
There are still 58,687 villages that have not yet established such command posts, he said.
Most of the areas that have not yet established Posko are located in North Sumatra, Papua, East Java, Central Java, South Sumatra, East Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi, West Java, Lampung, and Southeast Sulawesi, he added.
In seven of the 10 provinces that do not have COVID-19 handling posts, most of the regencies/cities have not implemented level 4 public activity restrictions (PPKM), he said. Thus, the implementation of Micro PPKM in their respective regions should be strengthened, he added.
“For this reason, I ask the sub-district heads from the listed sub-districts to immediately instruct their villages to form a post right now,” he said.
Public compliance with health protocols has increased in nearly every province of Indonesia, head of the behavior change division of the Task Force for COVID-19 Handling, Sonny Harmadi, had said earlier.
“The scores of public compliance with health protocols have increased in almost all provinces,” he said at an online discussion of the Merdeka Barat 9 forum, held here on Wednesday.
According to the task force, during the period between September 7, 2020 and July 20, 2021, compliance with the rule on wearing masks was 84.77 percent, social distancing and avoiding crowds was 87.11 percent, while the compliance score for the rule on hand washing using soap in running water was 7.65 out of 10.
The increasing public compliance with health protocols to prevent transmission of the coronavirus has partly been aided by behavior change ambassadors, Harmadi noted.
Source: Antara News