Jakarta (ANTARA) – Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin has asked hospitals across the country to prioritize treating COVID-19 patients with comorbidities whose condition is deteriorating.
Patients who do not have comorbidities are being advised to conduct self-isolation or get treated at centralized isolation facilities, he said at an online press conference on Monday.
Those undertaking isolation need to be admitted to a hospital if they have comorbidities and their condition worsens, which would be partly reflected by oxygen saturation levels of below 95 percent and shortness of breath, he informed.
Giving priority to such patients is aimed at protecting people with mild syndromes from getting exposed to high concentrations of coronavirus at hospitals, he said.
The policy would also lighten hospitals’ burden, he said, adding that the Health Ministry will closely coordinate with the military and police to select those requiring hospitalization.
“We do our utmost efforts to minimize the number of patients who fail to get hospital rooms,” Sadikin said.
Besides outlining his ministry’s endeavors to prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, Sadikin also highlighted the directives of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) .
He said Widodo has set a target of boosting Indonesia’s daily vaccination rate to one million doses. At the moment, Indonesia’s daily vaccination rate has reached 716 thousand doses, he informed.
“We are confident that our daily vaccination rate will reach one million doses in early July,” the minister said.
The COVID-19 outbreak initially struck the Chinese city of Wuhan in 2019 and thereafter spread across the world, including to nations in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Indonesian government announced the nation’s first confirmed cases on March 2, 2020.
Since then, the central and regional governments have striven incessantly to flatten Indonesia’s coronavirus curve by applying healthcare protocols and social restrictions.
As part of efforts to win the fight against COVID-19, the Indonesian government rolled out a nationwide vaccination program on January 13, 2021.
On Sunday, Indonesia obtained 10 million doses of the Sinovac bulk vaccines to produce vaccines.
As of June 20, 2021, Indonesia has received 104,728,400 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, comprising 94.5 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine, 8.228 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and two million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine.
The Indonesian Health Ministry has said the vaccination of the 181.5 million recipients targeted by the program is expected to take around 15 months.
Like last year, the government had banned homebound travel, or “mudik,” ahead of this year’s Eid al-Fitr holiday season to break the chain of COVID-19 spread, which has dampened the purchasing power of families across Indonesia.
Source: Antara News