VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

The government is improving data on the COVID-19 death rate in Indonesia as there are a number of records that do not match the conditions on the ground, Minister of Communication and Informatics, Johnny G. Plate, has said.

"The government has not removed or eliminated the death toll from the assessment of the level of public activity restrictions (PPKM)," he assured in a statement received in Jakarta on Thursday.

Improvements are currently being made to ensure data accuracy, the minister said adding, if data is tidy, the death indicator will be re-entered.

The government is continuing to work hard to harmonize and validate data from the field, regarding the indicators used for the PPKM level assessment, he said.

"There are three basic indicators used in determining the level of PPKM in an area, namely the rate of transmission, the positivity rate, and the mortality rate," he informed.

The minister said that the government found data in the form of accumulated COVID-19 patient mortality in the past few weeks, so they were not actual.

"This causes distortion in the analysis process of an area," he added.

He said the government has decided to improve the data by sorting out real-time death data on the day of a patient's death, which is currently accumulated in the death data of the central government.

For example, out of the number of deaths entered on a date, not all were actual deaths on that day, but included data that had been recorded three weeks earlier and then reported again, the minister said.

During data repair, he noted, the government will temporarily use other indicators for assessment.

Earlier, spokesperson for the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment, Jodi Mahardi, had said that the government is trying to act quickly to fix the death data to get a valid number.

As a result, the assessment result is also more accurate, Mahardi added. (Antaranews)