VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

The Indonesian government pushes the production of personal protective equipment and other medical devices with 100 percent raw materials from Indonesia.

The personal protective equipment met the international standards of AATCC 42 (American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists) and ISO and ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials), spokesperson for the COVID 19 Handling Task Force, Wiku Adisasmito said in a press statement on Thursday.

Wiku explained that this step was an effort and policy undertaken by the government in suppressing the spread of COVID 19. He added that other innovations made were making ventilators and cloth masks with the equivalent of surgical masks.

"Second, another innovation is making ventilators made in Indonesia that have been clinically tested well. The third is producing cloth masks, with the same filtration capability as surgical masks and reuseable, and developing domestic vaccines through the Eijkman and Biofarma consortium, namely the Merah Putih vaccine," Wiku said.

Wiku said the government aims to protect the vulnerable, comorbid sufferers, the elderly, including health workers.

Another step that the government will take is to suppress active cases to increase recovery and reduce mortality.
The government also aims to increase the number of testing, tracing, treatment, vaccinations, and increasing the availability of reagents, PCR, and personal protective equipment. (YouTube presidential secretariat / nouva)

The National Task Force for COVID-19 Response claimed on Thursday that the government's efforts over the past six months to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and curb infections have yielded fruit.

The government's efforts have included the issuance of a policy on using a zoning system to designate and control regional response, spokesperson for the task force, Prof. Wiku Adisasmito, said in reply to a journalist's question during a press conference at the Presidential Office here on Thursday(3/9).

Zoning refers to the disaster system, which classifies regions into red zones to represent areas with high risk, orange zones to represent areas with moderate risk, yellow zones to represent areas with low risk, and green zones to represent unaffected areas, he elaborated.

"The government also has increased the number of testing laboratories from one to more than 300 across Indonesia," he said.

Meanwhile, the number of referral hospitals, both at the national and provincial levels, has swelled to more than 800, he pointed out.

As a result, the percentage of active cases nationwide has declined to 23.64 percent of the total cases in August, 2020 from 91.26 percent in March, he noted.

"The mortality rate has also dropped to 4.47 percent in August, after reaching its peak of 8.64 percent in April, 2020," he added.

Likewise, the national recovery rate has also jumped to 72.17 percent of the total cases in August, 2020 from just 3.64 percent in March this year, he said.

In terms of innovation, the government has encouraged the production of local personal protective equipment and other medical devices using raw materials that are completely sourced from local suppliers, and in compliance with international standards, such as AATCC 42, ISO, and ASTM, Adisasmito said.

Other innovations include locally-made ventilators that have successfully undergone clinical testing and reusable face masks, which have a filtration capacity comparable to surgical masks.

Indonesia has recorded 3,622 new COVID-19 cases within the last 24 hours, which have pushed the total case count to 184,268, the task force reported on Thursday.

Meanwhile, with 2,084 people recovering from COVID-19, the total recoveries have reached 132,055.

The death toll has climbed to 7,750, with 134 additional people succumbing to the virus.

The figures suggest that the country currently has 44,463 active cases, or patients still receiving treatment or undergoing self-isolation.

On Thursday, the authorities examined 37,597 specimens from 19,306 people at 220 laboratories across the country. A total of 2,388,865 specimens from 1,353,291 people have been examined since the country reported the first COVID-19 cases in March, 2020.

The authorities have also recorded 84,071 suspected cases, who are currently under surveillance.

COVID-19 positive cases have been found in 34 provinces, with 488 cities and districts reporting infections.

On Thursday, five provinces recorded the highest number of new cases, with Jakarta reporting 1,359 new infections, East Java 377, Central Java 242, West Java 238, and Bali 174 cases. (ANTARANEWS)

The Ministry of Religious Affairs has awarded scholarships to 253 native Papuans to help them pursue undergraduate programs at universities in six big cities.

"We are sending 253 native Papuan youths to pursue their higher education in six big cities in Indonesia," Religious Affairs Minister Fachrul Razi said in Jayapura on Thursday.

Razi said he is keen to see the scholarship awardees complete their higher education and get Bachelor's degrees at least.

After the recipients successfully get their Bachelor's degrees with satisfactory grades, the ministry will offer another scholarship program to help them continue their studies at the post-graduate level.

The Religious Affairs Ministry is implementing the 5,000 Doctoral Degree Program, he added.

ANTARA has earlier reported how the development of human resources remains a tricky challenge for Papua and West Papua, as the human development index scores for the provinces remain low compared to that of other provinces in Indonesia.

On Indonesia's 2019 human development index, the scores of Papua and West Papua were recorded at 64.7 and 60.84 respectively.

At the global level, Indonesia's human development index is lower than in several other countries.

As the world's fourth most populous country, Indonesia is yet to rank among the world's most literate nations.

A 2016 study conducted by John W. Miller, a noted researcher at the Central Connecticut State University (CCSU), ranked Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, Germany, Latvia, and the Netherlands as the 10 most literate nations in the world.

In the study, titled "Literacy achievement tests (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and Program for International Student Assessment) and literate behavior characteristics (population, newspapers, libraries, years of schooling)", Indonesia had ranked 60th out of 61 countries. It's higher than Botswana, though far behind Singapore, which was placed 36th, and Malaysia, which took the 53rd position.

Miller asserted that a nation's literate behavior contributes to its successes and failures in dealing with the demands of the world's knowledge-based economics. (Antaranews)