Incentive for medical workers and distribution of Swiss-made Covid-19 detectors to 11 Provinces

Last updated on May 11th, 2021 at 09:01 am

The Riau provincial administration pay attention to medical workers who treats patients contracting the novel coronavirus disease or COVID-19. The Riau administration provided an allowance of Rp2 million per day for each of them.

“They will be given an incentive of Rp2 million per day,” said the Secretary of Riau administration, Yan Prana Jaya, in a written statement in Pekanbaru on Wednesday, April 8.

If a medical worker works for a full month working on COVID-19 patients in a referral hospital determined by the government, then he/she can bring home a Rp. 60 million allowance excluding salary.

The allowance was given since they are at great risk of getting infected. In Indonesia, hundreds of people have succumbed to the illness.

Additionally, the medics also have temporary homes, which the Riau administration provided Aryaduta Hotel in Pekanbaru with as many as 100 rooms for them to stay.

As many 44 hospitals across regencies and cities had also been tapped by the government as referral hospitals to handle the cases.

Meanwhile, the central government has reportedly imported 20 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) laboratory test machines from Swiss pharmaceutical company, Roche that are expected to improve the number of daily coronavirus (COVID-19) tests able to be done in a day. These coronavirus detection devices then distributed to 11 provinces to expedite response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to special staff of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) minister, Arya Mahendra Sinulingga, the 11 provinces to receive the diagnostic test equipment are Jakarta, West Java, Central Java, East Java, Bali, Lampung, South Sumatra, North Sumatra, East Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, and Papua.

Twenty PCR devices comprising two Automatic RNA Extractors and 18 PCR Detectors that are believed to be able to improve the average test numbers to 10,000 daily.

Arya explained that the two tools had different test capabilities. The first one, RNA Extractor can deliver results of up to one thousand RNA tests per day. The other one, PCR Detector has a capacity of 500 tests per day.

The Roche-made coronavirus (COVID-19) detectors will reportedly be ready for use starting next week and are expected to conduct up to 300 thousand tests per month.