VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan officially declared the capital city to be in a state of emergency for the Covid-19 outbreak on Wednesday night.

Anies said this decision is in accordance with President Joko Widodo's direction regarding health control as a top priority to achieve economic recovery during the pandemic.

"The President firmly stated not to restart the economy until health is under control. He put health as a top priority. There are not many options for Jakarta except to pull the emergency brake as soon as possible,” Anies told reporters at City Hall on Wednesday.

"We will pull the emergency brake, which means we are forced to re-implement large-scale social restrictions [PSBB]. It's no longer a transitional PSBB, but we have to carry out the PSBB as it was in the early days," Anies said.

"We will implement work at home, learn from home, and pray from home," he added.

According to the Governor, this policy will be effective starting September 14, 2020. The reason for this emergency brake was taken because of the significant increase in the number of Covid-19 cases.

According to Anies, this can be seen from the percentage of the number of funerals in Covid-19, the use of isolation beds to the use of the special Covid-19 ICU facilities in Jakarta over the past two weeks.

He emphasized that if this situation continues, hospitals will not be able to accommodate the growing number of Covid-19 patients and the impact of deaths from Covid-19 will increase.

"And this is what we have to draw out, as we saw earlier, once the restrictions were put in place, the number of cases decreased. So that we can save our brothers. Once again, this is a matter of saving the citizens of Jakarta, if this is allowed, the hospital will not be able to accommodate it and the effect of this is that there will be high mortality in Jakarta," Anies said

Regarding the details of the implementation later, Anies continued, it will be conveyed while the policy is running. However, there are 11 vital business fields that can continue to run but with minimal capacity, namely: Health, Food / Food and Beverage, Energy, Communication and Information Technology, Finance, Logistics, Hospitality, Construction, Strategic Industries, Basic Services, Utilities public and industry which are designated as national vital objects and certain objects, and Fulfillment of daily needs.

Anies Baswedan emphasized three things that Jakarta residents must obey, namely working from home, studying from home, and praying at home.

On Wednesday, 1,026 cases have increased, so that the total number of Covid-19 cases in the capital has reached 49,837.

Dwi Oktavia, Head of Disease Prevention and Control in Jakarta said this increase was obtained from the results of the massive PCR test conducted by the Provincial Government.

"We took 9,904 PCR specimens, 1,026 were positive and 6,897 were negative. The total PCR test rate per one million population is 67,335. The number of people tested for PCR this past week is 59,146," she explained in a daily update on the development of the Covid-19 case at City Hall.

"As long as the vaccine is not yet available, the transmission of the plague must be prevented together with the discipline of enforcing social restrictions and health protocol," she said. (RRI)