"The current hospital beds available for COVID-19 patients are 5,678, and we can prepare more beds to reach the 11,500 total capacity," Head of the office's Disease Prevention and Control Department Dwi Oktavia said in Jakarta on Saturday.
While more hospital beds will be prepared for COVID-19 patients, the provincial authorities will keep the number of referral hospitals for COVID-19 patients in Jakarta at 140, she informed.
"The referral hospitals are ready to accommodate the extra beds because they have learned from experiences during the COVID-19 second wave last July," she remarked.
Currently, Jakarta's hospital bed occupancy rate (BOR) has reached 63 percent, which means 3,572 beds out of the total 5,678 beds in the province are currently occupied, she informed. Thus, the BOR is under the 70-percent safe threshold, she noted.
As of Friday (February 4, 2022), the intensive care unit (ICU) bed occupancy in Jakarta was recorded at 31 percent, that is 220 beds were occupied out of the total 701 beds, she added.
"(More ICU beds) have been added and (some beds) repurposed to treat COVID-19 patients," Oktavia said.
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Earlier, Jakarta Health Office head Widyastuti had said that self-isolation at home will suffice for some asymptomatic COVID-19 patients who will only need to be secluded from other family members while recovering from the disease, provided that they fulfilled some conditions.
"The patients must be under 45 years old, have no comorbidity, have access to telemedicine or other healthcare assistance services, and are committed to remaining in self-isolation before being allowed to leave," Widyastuti said.
Patients who are self-isolating at home must stay in a different bedroom, or if possible on another story, and use a different bathroom than the other family members, she noted.
COVID-19 patients who are not eligible for self-isolation at home are required to undergo treatment at a centralized isolation facility under the supervision of the local health center or COVID-19 task force, the office head added.
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Translator: Dewa Ketut SW, Nabil Ihsan
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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