PRESS RELEASE

Collapse of Health Facilities and Risk of Death in Self-Isolated Patients

• • • • • • LaporCovid19 said 451 people died while carrying out self-isolation
            based on the findings of complaint reports, Twitter conversations and news reports on line until
            Monday, July 12 2021
          • CISDI said 446 people died while self-isolating in 12 districts/cities in
            West Java in the range of 30 June-6 July 2021
          • CISDI and LaporCovid19 encourage the government to take serious action in recording deaths
            when self-isolating and recommending several steps to prevent this
            that happened

Jakarta, 11 July 2021 The Center for Indonesia's Strategic Development Initiatives (CISDI) and LaporCovid19 encourage the government to take firm steps to prevent deaths while self-isolating or seeking health services during the period of spike in Covid-19 cases. Indonesia experienced a drastic spike in positive Covid-19 cases throughout July 2021. On July 11 2021, a spike in cases was even recorded, reaching 36,197. The high spike in cases is causing excess hospital capacity and tired health workers.

The Association of All Indonesian Hospitals (Persi) East Java, for example, said that at least 13 hospitals had temporarily closed emergency room services because they could no longer accommodate patients (Tempo.co, 7/7). This situation indirectly has an impact on the accumulation of patients with severe symptoms, the depletion of oxygen cylinder capacity, and the caps vary other health services, situations that ultimately trigger the patient's death when carrying out self-isolation or looking for a hospital.

The official report on the number of deaths due to self-isolation is thought to be much smaller than what actually occurred. From online media conversations Twitter, complaint reports, and media coverage on line, LaporCovid19 found at least 451 cases of patients who died while self-isolating or while looking for a hospital as of Monday (12/7). Deaths of self-isolating patients have been reported in various regions in Java, with the highest being in West Java, as well as outside Java, such as in West Sumatra or East Kalimantan.

Meanwhile, records from the Center for Indonesia's Strategic Development Initiatives (CISDI) state that at least 446 self-isolated patients died in the last 7 days (30 June-6 July 2021) in 12 districts/cities in West Java. The actual number of deaths in self-isolation could be much greater than recorded.

CISDI and LaporCovid19 encourage the government to be serious about disclosing data on deaths during self-isolation to the public as well as improving efforts to handle outbreaks to prevent similar deaths from recurring.

Ahmad Arif, Co-initiator of LaporCovid19, said that the trend of deaths during self-isolation has been quite intense recently. An interesting trend recently is that deaths during self-isolation have started to occur outside Java, such as in East Kalimantan, West Kalimantan, or East Nusa Tenggara, and West Sumatra. This is a kind of indication that the spread of this epidemic is already intense outside Java and needs to be our common concern. We believe that the recorded numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.

Diah Saminarsih, M.Sc. Senior Advisor on Gender and Youth Affairs to the Director General of WHO and Founder of CISDI, said the increase in deaths during self-isolation was a dangerous sign of the collapse of the national health system. The lack of readiness to strengthen the pillars of overcoming the health crisis makes handling the pandemic seem like it has lost direction and is not agile enough to respond to spikes in transmission. Upstream, primary health services are not prepared to deal with multi-layered workloads. This causes limited personnel, limited facilities for case detection and treatment, as well as medical equipment for emergencies, creating a deadlock in handling the current critical phase. In fact, all of these challenges could have been overcome if the strategy for handling the pandemic, especially for primary health services, had been prepared since this pandemic started 16 months ago. As a result, patients are found too late, receive first aid too late, and are referred too late.

CISDI and LaporCovid19 encourage the government to implement several recommendations to prevent deaths due to self-isolation from recurring. Meanwhile, some recommendations are as follows:

1. Expands range and sharpens focus testing in accordance with the Ministry of Home Affairs Instruction Number 15/2021 firmly and consistently.
2. Empowering communities to engage in capacity building tracing through volunteer activation at the community level
3. Activating centralized and independent self-isolation services, such as shelters self-isolation, to the community and facilitate it with qualified health workers
4. Strengthen pre-hospital treatment efforts such as by optimizing online consultation services
5. Prioritize data collection, monitoring and support for self-isolating patients
   as a database for the distribution of social, economic and medical support
6. Increasing education for patients who are self-isolating
7. Increasing government involvement down to the smallest level to support patients who are implementing self-isolation

-Finished-

About CISDI
The Center for Indonesia's Strategic Development Initiatives (CISDI) is think tanks which encourages the implementation of health policies based on scientific evidence to create an empowered, equal and prosperous Indonesian society with a healthy paradigm. CISDI carries out advocacy, research and program management to create transparent, adequate and equitable governance, financing, human resources and health services.

About LaporCovid19
LaporCovid19 is a forum (platforms) fellow citizens to share information regarding the number of incidents related to COVID-19 around us. Approach bottom-up through citizen reporting or crowdsourcing so that every citizen can participate in conveying information about cases related to COVID-19. For more information, visit:

Website: www.laporcovid19.org ,
IG: @laporcovid19 ,
Twitter: @LaporCovid ,
FB: Citizens' Coalition to Report Covid-19

Contact Person:
Bro. Amru, Content & Media Officer CISDI (0877-8273-4584)
Bro. Iban, LaporCovid-19 Data Analyst (0815-2744-0489)

This press release can be downloaded via the following link.

The following is a link to the dashboard for data on deaths outside hospitals recorded by LaporCovid-19