Telemedicine, Gov't's Secret Weapon to Contain Omicron

TheIndonesia.co - The Indonesian authorities have revealed the plan to put more focus on telemedicine as a strategy to contain the spread of COVID-19 variant Omicron.

The Ministry of Health predicted that the surge in Omicron cases will be higher compared to the previous outbreak of Delta variant. However, it also estimated hospitalization to be lower as symptoms have been found to be considerably mild.

“Omicron transmission will increase significantly than Delta, but hospitalized patients will be fewer. Therefore, the Ministry’s strategy is to focus on households rather than hospitals because a lot of people will get infected, but they won’t need to go to hospital,” Minster of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin said in a statement on Monday, January 10, as reported by Antara.

Since patients will likely be asymptomatic or experience mild symptoms, self-isolation at home is deemed sufficient, along with regular intake of vitamins and additional medicines which have been approved by the government.

And to support the self-isolating patients, government works with 17 telemedicine platform providers to ensure access to doctor consultation and free medicine delivery. They are Alodokter, Getwell, Good Doctor, Grabhealth, Halodoc, KlikDokter, KlinikGo, Link Sehat, Milvik Dokter, ProSehat, SehatQ, YesDok, Aido Health, Homecare24, Lekasehat, mDoc, Trustmedis, and Vascular.

The Ministry also revealed that from the 414 confirmed cases of Omicron, 99 percent of patients are asymptomatic or experience mild symptoms.

Two people required further treatment, and they reportedly have pre-existing conditions. And as of now, they have recovered.

The Indonesian government is also bracing the impending Omicron wave by accelerating vaccination, especially in regions with comparatively low vaccination rate.

National booster program will also start rolling out on January 12, targeting 21 million of Indonesians aged 18 and above, as per the recommendation from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Drug and Food Control Agency (BPOM) has also approved the use of five COVID-19 vaccines as booster to improve antibody. CoronaVac, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Zifivax were given the emergency use authorization (UEA) after evaluation by experts found the vaccines to have met the standards and requirements.