According to standards recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Indonesian government is still catching up with COVID-19 testing figures.
Professor Wiku Adisamito, the spokesperson for the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, has stated that the testing capacity per area has been adjusted per population density.
For national capacity, assuming Indonesia’s population as 267 million people, 267,000 people should be tested per week. From the beginning of June to the third week of October 2020, there was an upward trend in testing. The numbers decreased in the past two weeks, and have now started to increase again as of this week.
“Testing capacity is almost close to the WHO standard target of 86.25% in the second week of November. This condition is a joint effort, especially for local governments,” as quoted Kontan.co.id.
Each area of Indonesia must be evaluated to ensure testing capacity, especially during the holidays.
He appealed to local governments to add and improve laboratory operational mechanisms by increasing the number of laboratory shifts and providing incentives and coordination with the central government.
He went on to say that it needs to be recognised that it’s not easy to achieve a perfect health system in a country like Indonesia. He noted that geographically, Indonesia is vast and has many separate islands. However, he emphasised that the current aim for the government is to achieve an ideal testing capacity of over 86%.