It is true, there is news about the shortage of protective gear. But we have reminded hospitals in regions that there are national buffer stocks in provincesJakarta (ANTARA) - The government has prepared an adequate supply of self-protective gear for medical staff who handled coronavirus patients and called on hospitals that run out of gear to request additional stock for provincial health offices. "It is true, there is news about the shortage of protective gear. But we have reminded hospitals in regions that there are national buffer stocks in provinces," the government's spokesman for COVID-19 handling Achmad Yurianto said here Tuesday.
Provincial health offices would also have to monitor the supply of the gear for all medical staff in their respective regions, Yurianto said.
"We now have an adequate supply of protective gear after we found suppliers from outside China. We also have access (to suppliers) in Europe," he added.
The government has bought 10,000 kits for Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing to detect the coronavirus, Yurianto said.
The government have used a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and a gene sequencing analysis to test specimens from suspected patients as per World Health Organization standards.
The PCR testing can be performed in the Health Ministry’s research and development agency (Balitbangkes) and its laboratories in 10 regions namely Batam, Medan, Palembang, Makassar, Manado, Ambon, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Banjarmasin.
The country has recorded 19 COVID-19 cases within its borders as of Monday.
Two of the 19 coronavirus patients have shown significant improvement in health condition. Patient 6 and 16 would have to wait for the result of laboratory tests to confirm that they are free from the virus before they could be discharged from the hospital, Yurianto said.
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Translator: Rangga Pandu AJ, Sri Haryati
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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