Health Ministry to prepare transition to end Indonesia's Covid emergency status

On May 5, 2023, the WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the lifting of the Public Health Emergency of International Concern status for Covid-19. - AFP

JAKARTA (The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network): The Health Ministry is preparing the transitional steps for Indonesia to end the Covid-19 health emergency following the World Health Organization’s (WHO) decree that it was lifting the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) status for the disease on Friday (May 5).

“We express our gratitude to all medical and health workers that have struggled together to control the spread of Covid-19 in Indonesia. And now, together, we are heading toward ending the emergency status [of Covid-19 ],” Health Ministry spokesperson Mohammad Syahril said in a statement on Saturday.

On Friday, the WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the lifting of the PHEIC status for Covid-19, citing declining cases and mortality from the disease for more than a year, while population immunity had also increased from vaccination and infection.

“Mortality decreasing and pressure on the health system easing. [...] It is therefore with great hope that I declare it over as a global health emergency," Tedros said in a press briefing.

Tedros stressed that Covid-19 remained a serious threat to global public health, and countries should not use the latest news to let down their guard and dismantle the public health systems they had built to contain diseases like Covid-19.

Syahril said that the ministry had consulted with the WHO director-general and team in Geneva and Jakarta on how Indonesia should prepare for a pandemic-transition period prior to the WHO announcement of the removal of the PHEIC status for Covid-19.

He added that the WHO had lauded Indonesia’s preparations for the transition of Covid-19 from pandemic to endemic. However, the government remains on alert, Syahril said, as the WHO also underlined that a transition period to handle Covid-19 in the long term was needed.

He said the government would continue to implement public health surveillance, ensuring health facilities and medicine supplies as well as other public health policies were in place to ensure national health resilience and readiness against the possibilities of a new pandemic in the future.

Syahril also called on the public to remain careful and implement health protocols, while vaccination drives would still continue, especially to protect high-risk segments of society.