Jakarta (ANTARA) – Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin on Monday said that he has instructed COVID-19 test laboratories to put results online so patients’ data can be integrated with the PeduliLindungi application.

This would reduce the burden on laboratories that are performing a high number of tests of late, resulting in delays in updating of results on the PeduliLindungi application, he explained.

“I think there are 250–300 thousand test results (uploaded) per day on PeduliLindungi,” Sadikin noted in an online press statement after a community activity restrictions (PPKM) evaluation meeting on Monday.

“Yesterday, the number of tests reached 500 thousand, and there were many laboratories whose results were not submitted to the PeduliLindungi application. Also, there were several results uploaded incorrectly due to the heavy load,” he pointed out.

Sadikin said that he has instructed laboratories to upload results online to reduce their burden and prevent possible data entry errors.

“We realized the disorganization and we already have online connections between major laboratories so they do not have to repeat data entry. The test results would go directly to the PeduliLindungi application,” the minister informed.

The automatic integration of test results from major laboratories to the PeduliLindungi application would reduce the possibility of data entry errors and reduce the load on the application since the number of samples has doubled and that might led to human errors while entering data, he added.

According to data from the COVID-19 Task Force, on February 6, 2022, the number of confirmed positive cases climbed to 36,507, taking the total number of active cases nationwide to 188,899.

Sadikin informed that the number of cases in three provinces, namely Jakarta, Banten, and Bali, has surpassed the daily tally recorded during the peak of the Delta wave last year.

However, the hospital occupancy has reached 18,966 out of a total capacity of 120 thousand beds prepared for COVID-19 handling, he said.

Since January 21, at least 356 people have died due to COVID-19, he added. Sixty-nine percent of them had not completed their vaccination or had not been vaccinated at all, he informed.

Source: Antara News