Indonesia has reintroduced social restrictions in Jakarta and Bali as well as two major Javanese cities in response to a rapid uptick in daily cases of the highly transmissible Omicron coronavirus strain.
Senior cabinet minister Luhut Pandjaitan, who oversees the pandemic response in Java and Bali, announced tightened social restrictions in greater Jakarta and Bali, as well as in the West Javanese city of Bandung and Yogyakarta in Central Java.
Under the new regulations, supermarkets, malls and restaurants will operate at 60 per cent capacity, while capacity at houses of worship will be reduced to 50 per cent, he told a streamed news conference.
The Transport ministry had also announced that flights into Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport would be temporarily suspended to curb the spread of covid infection.
However, late yesterday the ministry updated it’s advice, confirming that travellers with the correct paperwork would still be able to enter the country via the capital.
International tourists and Indonesians returning home from overseas are also allowed arrive via Bali, or through international airports in Batam and Tanjung Pinang in the Riau Islands near Singapore.
Until now, the virus’s spread has been largely confined to the nation’s capital, however, active cases in Jakarta, Bali and Banten have now surpassed the number of infections experienced during the height of last year’s Delta outbreak.
But according to Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin, hospitalisations remain relatively low.
On Sunday the bed occupancy rate at hospitals in Jakarta reached 63 per cent, up from 45 per cent in January.
That same day, the country recorded 36,057 new cases and 57 deaths.
This represents the nation’s highest number of daily cases in almost six months and a thirty-fold increase in case numbers in the space of one month.
Yesterday there were only 26,121 reported cases but the number of deaths jumped to 88.
Authorities warn that the current surge in case numbers is not expected to peak until late February.
Source – Al Jazeera, ABC News Australia