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Government confident ‘mudik’ will not trigger another COVID-19 wave
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Passengers going on 'mudik' (exodus), an Idul Fitri tradition where people go back to their hometowns to celebrate Idul Fitri with family and friends, carry their luggage to a bus in Pakupatan Bus Terminal in Serang, Banten on April 22, 2022. (Antara/Asep Fathulrahman)
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he government has expressed confidence that the tradition of mudik (exodus) in which millions of people throughout the country return to their hometowns to celebrate Idul Fitri, will not cause another wave of COVID-19 cases.
Such confidence is partly based on a recent serosurvey that revealed most people in Java – the country’s most populous island – and Bali have already achieved immunity to the coronavirus, either through natural infection or vaccination.
National COVID-19 Task Force spokesperson Wiku Adisasmito said that there might be a slight increase in transmissions after the Idul Fitri holiday season, which will fall between May 1 and 8, but stressed that such an increase would not be as high as in the previous years.
“As long as there is no new [dangerous COVID-19] variant, we will be safe,” Wiku told journalists on Wednesday.
Over the past two years, all of the country’s waves of coronavirus transmissions occurred following increased public mobility during long holiday seasons.
Indonesia’s first COVID-19 wave occurred several weeks after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays in 2020, when some 10 million people traveled across the archipelago. COVID-19 cases – dominated by the Alpha variant – rose by 122 percent nationwide, peaking at 14,500 cases a day in late January 2021.
The country then saw its most devastating surge in infections in July last year, about six weeks after 2 million people went back to their hometowns to celebrate Idul Fitri despite a prevailing domestic travel ban at the time.
