The First Intra-Action Review of Indonesia's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, August 2020

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on health, society, and the economy globally and in Indonesia. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the use of intra-action reviews (IARs) to identify best practices, gaps, and lessons learned to make real-time improvements to the COVID-19 response. The Emergency Committee of the International Health Regulations (2005) has recommended that countries share COVID-19 best practices and lessons learned with peer countries through IARs. Using WHO-established methodology, we conducted the first IAR of Indonesia's COVID-19 response from January through August 2020. The review covered 10 thematic areas (pillars): (1) command and coordination; (2) operational support and logistics; (3) surveillance, rapid response teams, risk assessment, and field investigation; (4) laboratories; (5) case management; (6) infection prevention and control; (7) risk communication and community empowerment; (8) points of entry, international travel, and transportation; (9) large-scale social restrictions; and (10) maintaining essential health services and systems. We held focus group discussions with a variety of stakeholders from a range of government departments, provincial health offices, and nongovernmental organizations. We used the results of the focus group discussions and other key findings from the IAR to formulate recommendations. The IAR identified key areas for improvement at national and subnational levels across all 10 pillars. Priority recommendations included improving multisectoral coordination and monitoring of COVID-19 response plan indicators; strengthening implementation of public health response measures, including case detection, isolation, infection prevention and control, contact tracing, and quarantine; and improving data collection, analysis, and reporting to inform public health risk assessment and response. The IAR is a useful tool for reviewing progress and identifying areas to improve the COVID-19 response in real time and provides a means to share information on areas of need with COVID-19 response partners and contributes to International Health Regulations (2005) core capacity development.

Keywords: COVID-19; Epidemic management/response; Intra-action review; Public health emergency of international concern; Public health preparedness/response.