Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin attends a meeting with your home of Representatives’ Commission IX, which manages healthcare and labor concerns, on Feb 8,2021 (Antara Photo/Hafidz Mubarak A.)
BY: MARIA FATIMA BONA
FEBRUARY 18, 2021
Jakarta Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin has actually thought the government’s Covid-19 test reporting application’s complicated interface kept laboratories from reporting the complete test data on time, distorting key indicators for evaluating the pandemic circumstance in Indonesia.
Budi stated laboratories focused on reporting favorable polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results over the unfavorable ones to make sure the infected person can enter isolation as soon as possible, a crucial action thinking about that it was typical for many in Indonesia to wait 3 to 7 days for the result.
” Due to the fact that the amount of information is so large and the user interface is made complex, numerous [laboratories opt to] punch in the positive results first, neglecting lots of unfavorable results,” Budi said in an interview on Wednesday.
On the other hand, the labs’ choice would synthetically increase the daily positivity rate– the ratio between favorable test outcomes and the total tests performed on that day.
Hours after journalism conference, the Health Ministry reported a tremendous 97 percent positivity rate on Wednesday, with 9,687 out of 9,991 tests ended up positive. That brought the seven-day typical favorable rate spiked to 40 percent on Wednesday, a level the country has never seen considering that last April, after progressively rising from 20 percent in the previous two months.
The World Health Organization (WHO) advises a positivity rate of under 5 percent to suggest that a country traces and tests enough thinks to control the pandemic.
Budi said the ministry is working to improve the interface for its test-reporting application to make it easier for labs, medical facilities, and other health facilities to submit reports.
” We believe that with more information, including negative outcomes, it will make our positivity rate show the real number,” Budi said.
The exemption of unfavorable results may also describe a significant drop in the number of day-to-day tests. The rolling seven-day average for the daily test was at 25,533 on Wednesday, down 43 percent from its peak of 44,878 on Jan29
The drop in the number of tests has triggered the public to question the country’s day-to-day Covid-19 cases number, which has been declining since the beginning of the month.
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