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Government to evaluate restriction levels as COVID-19 cases soar
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said he had instructed Cabinet ministers to evaluate prevailing curbs in light of the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the country.
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A health worker performs a swab antigen test on a child in Krukut subdistrict, West Jakarta, on Jan. 10. (Antara/Muhammad Adimaja )
T
he government has said it will evaluate the prevailing levels of public mobility restrictions (PPKM) amid a surge of COVID-19 cases driven in large part by the Omicron variant, while epidemiologists say curbs must be tightened to prevent the nation’s hospitals from being overwhelmed.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said on Thursday that he had instructed Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan, who oversees the government’s pandemic response in Java and Bali, and Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto, who oversees the government’s pandemic response for the rest of the nation, to “evaluate” the nation’s regional restriction levels.
He called on the public to remain calm amid the case spike, which he said the government had anticipated and was prepared for, noting that the symptoms of the Omicron variant were generally milder than those of other variants.
“The increase [in cases] has been anticipated by the government, which is better prepared than in the previous years in terms of hospitals, medicine, oxygen, isolation [facilities] and health workers,” said Jokowi in Medan, North Sumatra.
“Therefore, I urge [the public] to remain calm. The Omicron variant is indeed highly contagious, but its fatality rate is far lower than that of the Delta variant.”
Jokowi’s statement came not long after the Jakarta administration proposed to the government that curbs be tightened in the capital as cases continued to rise.
Jakarta Deputy Governor Ahmad Riza Patria emphasized that the final decision on the city’s restriction level would be made by the central government but added that the decision should take the situation in Jakarta’s surrounding areas into account.
