The Indonesian government will drop the quarantine requirement for foreign travelers coming to Bali starting on March 14, in a trial designed to attract visitors to Indonesia’s main tourist attraction, a senior minister said on Sunday.
Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the minister responsible for overseeing the government’s Covid response in Java and Bali, also confirmed that the visa on arrival policy for international visitors would resume from this date.
During the trial period, foreign travellers coming to Bali must meet several requirements, Luhut said.
First, they must show payment for hotel bookings of at least four days duration. Second, they must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
Third, they will need to take a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test upon arrival and agree to wait for the results in their hotel room until the negative test results come out, typically within 24 hours.
“After being declared negative, they can be free to do any activities,” Luhut said. Foreign travellers will take another PCR test on the third day at their respective hotels after which time they will be free to travel beyond Bali to other parts of the country.
With Covid case numbers in Indonesia peaking at over 64,000 in recent weeks, authorities are confident that the country is now moving past the peak of the Omicron-induced wave.
Bali has reported around 587 cases a day in the past week, declining 54 percent from 1.284 cases per day a week earlier, data from the Ministry of Health showed.
The island province is among 17 regions in Indonesia that showed a decline in new Covid-19 cases in the past week.
Source – The Jakarta Globe, Bali Sun