The Speaker of the Indonesian House, Dr. (H.C.) Puan Maharani donated one unit of PCR machine and twenty-one boxes of Detection Kit for 2019-nCov to the Microbiology Laboratory of the Medical Faculty, Universitas Indonesia as a form of the House’s commitment in helping accelerate the handling of Corona virus (Covid-19). She said a mass, fast, and accurate test was needed to prevent transmission of the confirmed Covid-19 patient to other people.  

Chairperson of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle Faction, Utut Adianto handed over the Covid-19 test machine to Vice Dean for Education, Research, and Students Affairs of the Faculty of Medicine, Professor Dwiana Ocviyanti, MD, OB/GYN, MPH of the Universitas Indonesia.on Tuesday. “The earlier we detect a person infected by the Corona virus, the easier we prevent the spread and break the transmission chain. Therefore, the availability of specimen test tool is needed,” Maharani said.

In her written remarks, the Speaker said that from the beginning, the House had strongly suggested that Covid-19 test be carried out massively and took proportional samples, given Indonesia’s total population reaching more than 260 million people. According to Maharani, faster process of Covid-19 test result that involved more people to be detected could allow the possibility to get more reliable data for the basis of decision making on efficient and effective health policy.

This Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle politician expressed her hope that the PCR kit could help detect Covid-19. “Indonesia has health experts in the university whose knowledge is very qualified and we must support them with essential tools,” Maharani added. The Microbiology Department of Universitas Indonesia thanked Puan for the assistance.  

“Having this tool is certainly very helpful for us. People are relying on us to be able to conduct 1000 specimen tests every day, while the capacity of the equipment in the existing lab is only for 300 samples. With the additional tools, of course the testing capacity will increase and hopefully we can do more to handle this pandemic considering the PCR machine will increase test capacity of the microbiology laboratory to 900 samples per day. ” The Head of Microbiology Department, Dr. Fera Ibrahim, MD, Phd concluded.