PRESS RELEASE

Government Must Rectify the Accuracy for Mortality Data Instead of Disregarding It

The Coordinating Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan stated that the Indonesian government did not apply mortality rate data as an indicator to conduct evaluation on the Enforcement of Public Activity Restrictions (PPKM) Level 4 and PKKM level 3 in several regions. This was administered due to mortality data that was reported had turned out to be inaccurate because there was input data from accumulation of the number of deaths from several weeks ago.

In the enforcement of PPKM Level 4 and 3 that will be carried out on 10-16 August 2021, there are 26 cities or regencies which will move from Level 4 to Level 3. This shows the condition on the field has a quite significant improvement. We conducted such evaluation by removing the number of deaths from our assessment indicator because we discovered the input data which came from mortality rate accumulation from the last several weeks that had caused distortion in our evaluation, said Luhut at the press conference which was broadcasted through Kemenko Marves Youtube channel on Monday (9/82021).

Mortality Rate Data as an Indicator for the Pandemic Ramification Should not be Eliminated

The governments decision not to use the mortality data in their PPKM Level 4 and 3 evaluation is certainly questionable. That is because the mortality rate is a crucial indicator to assess the effectiveness of the government’s management in handling the Covid-19 pandemic.

Data inaccuracies in mortality rate should not be an excuse for the government to ignore that data. By being aware that the mortality rate is inaccurate, the government ought to come up with efforts to revise them so the data would be indeed accurate.

Moreover, the death data that has been disclosed by the government over the course is actually still not enough to describe how tremendous the impact of Covid-19. This is because the number of deaths announced by the central government appeared to be far less compared to the data reported by local governments.

The government should also publish the number of people who died with probable status so that the people can accurately comprehend the existing impact of the ongoing pandemic. Data rectification must be done instead of disregarding the mortality data and not applying them in the evaluation for PPKM Level 4 and 3.

Recurring Gaps in Mortality Data Presses for Improvement in Data Collection Technicalities

Based on the data gathered by LaporCovid19 team, we found that there are more than 19,000 thousands deaths that have been reported by regency/city-level local governments, but not documented within the central governments records. Data from 510 regency/city-level local governments collected by LaporCovid19 team showed that until 7 August 2021, there were about 124,790 people who reportedly died with the status of Covid-19 positive.

Meanwhile, at the same time the sum of Covid-19 positive deaths published by the central government was 105,598 deaths. Therefore, this means between the data from regency/city-level local governments and the central government there is a deviation of 19,192 deaths.

If spelled out, below are the 10 provinces with the biggest numerical deviation in the data of Covid-19 positive death cases:

Central Java -9,662

West Java -6,215

Special Region of Yogyakarta -889

Papua -663

West Kalimantan -643

North Sumatera -616

Central Kalimantan -301

East Java -294

Banten -140

West Nusa Tenggara -112

As of 7 August 2021, below are the 10 provinces with the highest number of deaths cases:

Central Java 31,914

East Java 22,297

West Java 16,534

DKI Jakarta 12,750

Special Region of Yogyakarta 4,737

Eastern Kalimantan 3,886

Riau 2,828

Lampung 2,603

Banten 2,437

Bali 2,385

Those 10 provinces represent 82.5% of total Covid-19 positive deaths cases in Indonesia.

Published Death Rate has not Included the Probable Deaths

The mortality rate that has been published by the government all this time still does not cover the deaths of Covid-19 patients with probable status. Based on the data collected by LaporCovid19, the accumulation for probable deaths in Indonesia at least has reached 26,326 deaths.

Therefore, if the Covid-19 deaths cases are accumulated with the number of probable deaths, the pandemic-related total deaths in Indonesia has reached 151,116 deaths.

Data source: official city/regency-level government websites (with some from provincial government websites) from all of Indonesia curated by KawalCovid19 and daily reports from Indonesias Ministry of Health (Kemenkes RI) and then analyzed by LaporData LaporCovid19 Team.

Death during Self Isolation Keeps on Occurring

On the other hand, the number of deaths that occured to the patients outside medical facilities have not been recorded very well within the governments records system. Whereas, based on the data collected by LaporCovid19 team, many patients died whilst going through self-isolation at their own homes or other places.

From early June until 7 August 2021, LaporCovid19 team recorded that at least 3,007 people died outside the medical facilities. The real number of deaths could possibly be even higher because this data only came from 108 cities/regencies within 25 provinces.

Furthermore, at the moment DKI Jakarta is the only province that publishes the death rate of Covid-19 self-isolating patients. Consequently, LaporCovid19 urges other local governments to also publish the death rate data of the self-isolating patients.This transparency is crucial so the people can better understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Translated by:
Christie Santara

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