Chairman of the Indonesian People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR RI) Bambang Soesatyo has called on the Health Ministry to study and evaluate the high mortality rate among elderly people exposed to COVID-19.

“The Health Ministry needs to study the main cause of the high mortality rate among elderly people since they belong to the group that is vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19,” Soesatyo noted in a written statement here on Wednesday.

The number of elderly people succumbing to COVID-19 currently reaches 12 percent, or four folds higher than the national mortality rate at 2.82 percent, the MPR chairman remarked.

Soesatyo made an earnest request to the Health Ministry to be more heedful about the handling and protection of elderly people at high risk of death after contracting the infection. “Medical workers should be tasked with monitoring and checking the health condition of elderly people, so precautionary measures can be taken to prevent them from being exposed to coronavirus,” he remarked.

The MPR chairman called on the Health Ministry to intensify door-to-door vaccination drives for elderly people.

In addition, the ministry should convince elderly people that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and useful to better protect them from coronavirus, he remarked.

Indonesia reported 1,128 COVID-19-related deaths on Wednesday (Aug 18), thereby bringing the total death toll recorded in the country, so far, to 121,141, according to data released by the Health Ministry.

The death toll makes Indonesia one of the world’s 10 largest countries in terms of the COVID-19 mortality rate.

Source: Antara News