THE government will continue to implement the lowest level of public activity restrictions (PPKM) until early next month, assuring that the loosened curbs would be enough to contain a recent spike in Covid-19 cases.
Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto, who oversees the pandemic response in regions outside Java and Bali, said almost all of the regions under his watch would maintain PPKM level one, the least stringent in the four-tiered curbs.
“We will extend the restrictions from July 5 to Aug 1. Out of the 385 cities and regencies outside of Java and Bali, only one regency will implement PPKM level two, while the remaining will continue to implement PPKM level one,” Airlangga said on Monday.
Meanwhile, Home Ministry Regional Administration Development Director General Safrizal ZA told the press that most regions in Java and Bali would also continue to implement PPKM level one until next month.
In addition to maintaining the relatively lax curbs, the government will continue to impose its already eased rules for mask-wearing despite mounting calls by health experts and medical professionals to review the policy amid the current spike in infections.
Just last month, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced that people were no longer required to wear masks outdoors although he still recommended mask-wearing in crowded outdoor settings, as well as for the elderly and those with underlying health conditions and acute coughing.
Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Monday that there would be no change in the mask policy so far, effectively dismissing previous statements by Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin, who said outdoor mask-wearing would be made mandatory again amid the recent case surge.
Budi said the government was confident that the recent wave of cases, fuelled by the highly contagious Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, would be fairly limited compared to previous waves.
“Although cases have generally been rising, we have started to see a plateau,” he said.
“We are currently nearing the peak of the BA.4 and BA.5 wave, but our daily new cases is only 4-5% of the peak of the Omicron-fuelled wave earlier this year.”
Previously, Budi said that based on the government’s epidemiological modelling, the current surge was expected to peak in the second or third week of this month.
The minister also predicted that daily new case numbers during this time could reach 20,000, roughly 30% of the Omicron wave’s peak of around 60,000 daily cases.
Indonesia recorded around 13,400 confirmed Covid-19 cases last week, a 9% increase from the week before that with 12,300 cases.
Fatalities rose by 6% last week to 32 cases from 30 deaths a week prior. But daily case numbers have been declining for three consecutive days, from 2,300 on Thursday, 2,000 on Friday and 1,700 on Saturday to 1,600 cases on Sunday.
Nationwide Covid-19 bed occupancy rates have also been relatively stable, staying at around 2% in the past week.
Budi attributed the relatively stable situation to the fact that around 99% of the population in Java and Bali already had some form of immunity against the coronavirus, either through infection or vaccination, according to a government survey conducted in March.
But epidemiologist Dicky Budiman said it was still too early to conclude that Indonesia would see a fairly limited case surge in the next few weeks.
“It’s difficult to conclude whether we will see a lower surge of transmissions compared to previous waves, as Indonesia is now taking a passive approach to testing.
“This means that authorities won’t find many cases if the public is reluctant to go to testing centres,” he pointed out.
He also predicted that the current wave of infections would likely last longer than previous waves, especially with the recent emergence of a new Omicron subvariant called BA.2.75.
The subvariant has a better capacity to evade the immune system compared to the original strain and has contributed to a surge of infections in India. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
