JAKARTA, iNews.id – Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan requested the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) as well PT Bio Farma (Persero) will soon produce Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and a rapid test tool. This step is to meet the needs of domestic medical devices.
Head of Corporate Communication Bio Farma Iwan Setiawan responded to the statement. He said Bio Farma’s management welcomed Luhut’s suggestion.
In fact, long before Luhut wanted BUMN Pharmacy to independently produce PCR and rapid tests, the company had already started producing Real Time-Polymerase Chain Reaction kits (RT-PCR) which started in early May 2020.
“Yes mas, Bio Farma has started producing RT-PCR (Real Time-Polymerase Chain Reaction) kits starting in early May 2020,” said Iwan, when contacted, Sunday (4/10/2020).
He said RT-PCR was a reagent kit for examining or identifying people exposed to Covid-19 using the Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction method. Where, this method is the gold standard for knowing whether people are infected with Covid-19.
In fact, Director of Bio Farma Honesti Basyir said that his company produces around 240 thousand units of RT-PCR per month. The medical device production capacity will be increased to 1.5 million units, and eventually to 2 million units in September 2020.
Related to this, Iwan said, his party had met all the PCR kit production targets. The production results have also been distributed to a number of hospitals (RS) in all regions in Indonesia.
The drug manufacturer continues to increase its production because the demand from hospitals continues to increase. Even so, the production is done commercially. “We are running, according to the production target. Currently we are producing it for commercial use and it has been distributed to all regions, production will continue because the demand for PCR kits increases, both from hospitals and others,” he said.
Previously, Luhut requested that domestic production capacity be absorbed first and import if domestic production was insufficient. In fact, technically speaking, he said Bio Farma’s PCR test kits could produce 1.5 million and could increase by 3.5 million per month.
“But what really needs to be paid attention is the stock of reagents. I asked Honesti (Managing Director of Bio Farma) for this reagent for domestic production as well. Domestic production is still limited, now how do we increase that capacity, “he said.
Editor: Dani Dahwilani
