The Use of a Health Compliance Monitoring System During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia: Evaluation Study

Abstract

Background COVID-19 cases are soaring in Asia. Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s most populous country, is now ranked second in the number of cases and deaths in Asia, after India. The compliance toward mask wearing, social distancing, and hand washing needs to be monitored to assess public behavioral changes that can reduce transmission. Objective This study aimed to evaluate this compliance in Indonesia between October 2020 and May 2021 and demonstrate the use of the Bersatu Lawan COVID-19 (BLC) mobile app in monitoring this compliance. Methods Data were collected in real time by the BLC app from reports submitted by personnel of military services, police officers, and behavioral change ambassadors. Subsequently, the data were analyzed automatically by the system managed by the Indonesia National Task Force for the Acceleration of COVID-19 Mitigation. Results Between October 1, 2020, and May 2, 2021, the BLC app generated more than 165 million reports, with 469 million people monitored and 124,315,568 locations under observation in 514 districts/cities in 34 provinces in Indonesia. This paper grouped them into 4 colored zones, based on the degree of compliance, and analyzed variations among regions and locations. Conclusions Compliance rates vary among the 34 provinces and among the districts and cities of those provinces. However, compliance to mask wearing seems slightly higher than social distancing. This finding suggests that policy makers need to promote higher compliance in other measures, including social distancing and hand washing, whose efficacies have been proven to break the chain of transmission when combined with masks wearing.