Minister Orders Active Surveillance, Strict Health Protocols During Face-to-Face Learning

Minister of Health Budi G. Sadikin (Photo: Rahmat/PR)

The Government continues to monitor limited face-to-face learning (PTM) through active surveillance and strict health protocols to prevent new COVID-19 clusters in education units, Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin has said.

“We believe that all students in Indonesia must conduct PTM learning immediately to avoid students missing the opportunities to study directly from their teachers. For this reason, it is necessary for us to guide the activies through good surveillance methods and health protocols,” said Budi in a press statement after a limited meeting on evaluation of the implementation of public activity restrictions (PPKM) policy, Monday (04/10).

According to Budi, his Ministry has developed an active surveillance method for educational units that conduct limited face-to-face learning.

“We will do active or random surveillance at ten percent of the schools that conduct face-to-face learning in one regency / city. From there, we will distribute it proportionately to the districts in the regency / city. We will then take 30 samples for students and three samples for teachers,” he explained.

Based on the test results, Budi added, if the positivity rate of one school is above five percent, the school will conduct distance learning or online learning for two weeks.

“We will order the school to close for two weeks while we fix the health protocols. Then they can start the school again [after two weeks],” said Budi.

Meanwhile, for schools with a positivity rate between 1-5 percent, only one class or study group with positive confirmed cases will be quarantined, while others can continue to participate in limited PTM, he added.

Budi went on to explain that if the positivity rate is below one percent, those who will be quarantined are school residents who are confirmed positive and their close contacts.

The Minister also ensured that his Ministry would continue to work closely with Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology to improve the quality of COVID-19 surveillance in education units.

“We hope that by taking such measures, we can early identify any positive cases among students and do not have to wait until the number of cases increase so we have to close the whole city,” he said. (FID/UN) (EST/EP)