The government recently issued instructions about implementing small-scale social restrictions or mini lockdowns to reduce Covid-19 transmissions and keep economic activity still running.
According to Bayu Satria Wiratama, MPH as the UGM epidemiologist, this regulation will not be effective in high Covid-19 transmission areas, particularly if the local government cannot conduct robust tracing and testing and good case mapping.
"However, this micro lockdown is necessary to be supported by the ability of the tracing team and good data analysis to determine which clusters of transmission should be restrained," he explained.
He added that the mapping process is not comparably detailed with the number of cases, it will look as if all regions need to be locked down so that it will be the same as lockdown or quarantine of the area.
In Indonesia, the Covid-19 transmission case still keeps increasing. As of Sunday (27/9), government data shows a total of 275,213 cases of Covid-19 in the country with 3,874 new cases.
The small scale restrictions are those at the village, RT, RW, or office level. The mini lockdown application will be based on Covid-19 distribution data to see which villages or areas are in the red or black zone so that only those villages will employ the mini lockdown.
Many parties have considered this step to be implemented as an alternative for policies to restrict socio-economic activities at a broader level, such as districts/cities or provinces, which are possible to impact the economy.
Bayu did not deny that this step could be an effective control effort, especially if the implementation were in areas with low Covid-19 transmission level.
However, this kind of restriction needs to be done in a controlled manner, starting from mapping, restriction, food assistance, and tracing and testing at the smallest level that will be locked down.
According to him, if the mini lockdown policy is implemented, the regions have the ability or capacity to implement local quarantine measures, especially at the provincial capital level.
Besides, in his remarks, for the tracing process itself, it still encounters several obstacles, especially from the aspect of limited human resources. The standard in every case of positive Covid-19 patients, the isolation trace ratio reaches at least 30 people.
"So far, tracing efforts have not been running well, because the isolation trace ratio for each case has not reached a minimum number of 30 people per one case," said Bayu.
Author: Gloria
Photo: Freepik.com
Translator: Natasa A