Jakarta – The Indonesian government has decided to cut travel quarantine mandatory from five days to three days, starting next month.
The Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said that the decision applied for overseas travelers who had received their booster vaccine doses against Covid-19.
“If the situation continues improving and vaccinations continue to increase, the government plan to cut the quarantine period to three days on March 1, or even sooner,” Luhut said in a virtual press conference.
The decision was part of a more significant move by the government to ease restrictions in the major metropolitan areas across Indonesia as it projected the third wave of Covid-19 would peak this week.
Luhut said the government decided to allow offices in Java and Bali to operate at 50 percent of capacity from 25 percent last week.
Moreover, the arts, cultural and social activities in public facilities and tourism destinations can also operate at 50 percent of the maximum capacity. Thus, roadside vendors to art workers can continue to carry out their activities and “do not need to lose their jobs due to the government policy.”
Indonesia reported 57,409 new cases today, up from 36,501 new cases on Monday. Still, the most populous country in Southeast Asia reported 134 deaths.
Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin said he believed the peak daily death toll during the current Omicron wave would not exceed the Delta’s wave last July. The government reported 2,069 deaths from Covid-19 in a day at the peak of the previous wave.
“There is an increase [in the death toll in the past few days]. Based on our experience, the death number lags about two weeks behind the new cases figure,” Budi said.
“But, I think the death toll won’t reach 500 or 1,000 in a day now. That’s just improbable,” he said.
The minister also said there were signs that the Covid-19 spread in Jakarta, Banten, West Java, and Bali, the four provinces that currently have the most Covid-19 cases, had been slowing down.
“[The number of new cases in] Jakarta most likely would move past its peak this week and begin to decline. The hospital occupancy ratio there is also low, about 40-50 percent below that of during Delta,” Budi said.
Source: Jakartaglobe.id
