JAKARTA: Indonesia on Saturday (May 9) reported 533 new coronavirus infections, the biggest daily increase, taking the total number to 13,645, health ministry official Achmad Yurianto said.
Yurianto reported 16 more have died from the disease, taking the total number of death to 959, while 2,607 have recovered.
Nearly 108,700 people have been tested as of Saturday, he added, while urging Indonesians to continue obeying the stay-at-home order to prevent further spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, the provinces have blamed flawed distribution of reagents, too few laboratories and a lack of expertise for preventing them from getting near President Joko Widodo's target of 10,000 coronavirus tests a day in the country.
Medical experts have criticised the government for its low testing rate, which potentially masks the scale of its Covid-19 outbreak, with only around 50 tests per 100,000 people compared with 2,500 per 100,000 in neighbouring Singapore.
According to notes of a meeting between regional health authorities and indonesia's COVID-19 task force, indonesia's testing rate as of Wednesday was 4,000-5,000 specimens a day.
Health authorities in the easternmost province of Papua said there was a shortage of reagents and limited human resources, according to the notes reviewed by Reuters.
The province of Central Java, for example, was only capable of testing 600 samples a day despite their 900-sample intake, the notes said.
Riau province said 12,000 reagents allotted to them were inadvertently sent to a different province with a similar name, Riau Islands.
Yurianto, a senior health ministry official, confirmed the contents of the notes and said there were 76 labs capable of conducting tests, but only 53 were operational, due to issues of access and distribution of reagents.
Yurianto cited the example of how tests in North Kalimantan on Borneo island could not be sent to Surabaya, a city on Java island, over 1,200 kilometers away, which hosts the designated labs for the region.
"This is a very complex issue. Even when the labs are operational, but (the reagents) are in Jakarta. How can we send them to Papua when the travel ban is still in place?" he said. - Reuters
Yurianto reported 16 more have died from the disease, taking the total number of death to 959, while 2,607 have recovered.
Nearly 108,700 people have been tested as of Saturday, he added, while urging Indonesians to continue obeying the stay-at-home order to prevent further spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, the provinces have blamed flawed distribution of reagents, too few laboratories and a lack of expertise for preventing them from getting near President Joko Widodo's target of 10,000 coronavirus tests a day in the country.
Medical experts have criticised the government for its low testing rate, which potentially masks the scale of its Covid-19 outbreak, with only around 50 tests per 100,000 people compared with 2,500 per 100,000 in neighbouring Singapore.
According to notes of a meeting between regional health authorities and indonesia's COVID-19 task force, indonesia's testing rate as of Wednesday was 4,000-5,000 specimens a day.
Health authorities in the easternmost province of Papua said there was a shortage of reagents and limited human resources, according to the notes reviewed by Reuters.
The province of Central Java, for example, was only capable of testing 600 samples a day despite their 900-sample intake, the notes said.
Riau province said 12,000 reagents allotted to them were inadvertently sent to a different province with a similar name, Riau Islands.
Yurianto, a senior health ministry official, confirmed the contents of the notes and said there were 76 labs capable of conducting tests, but only 53 were operational, due to issues of access and distribution of reagents.
Yurianto cited the example of how tests in North Kalimantan on Borneo island could not be sent to Surabaya, a city on Java island, over 1,200 kilometers away, which hosts the designated labs for the region.
"This is a very complex issue. Even when the labs are operational, but (the reagents) are in Jakarta. How can we send them to Papua when the travel ban is still in place?" he said. - Reuters
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