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Govt to ease more curbs after Lebaran policy ‘success’
Government officials are entertaining further pandemic restriction easing as the country emerges out of the Idul Fitri holiday largely unscathed.
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Indonesians enjoy the long Idul Fitri holidays with their families at a beach in Banten on May 4. (AFP/Dziki Oktomauliyadi)
T
he government insists that this year’s Idul Fitri holiday has been a “huge success” in terms of keeping COVID-19 cases under control, as officials promise to further relax pandemic curbs with due caution.
When presiding over its biggest gamble, allowing the annual mudik (exodus) tradition to resume after a two years’ absence, the government anticipated that some 85 million people would vacate urban centers across Java to visit relatives and celebrate the Islamic holiday in the regions.
Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan noted that pandemic indicators have continued to show signs of improvement, even though instances of high public mobility have been known to lead to caseload spikes.
Luhut, who leads mitigation efforts in Java and Bali, said on Monday that the country has consistently reported less than 500 daily COVID-19 cases over the past few days.
Monday saw the COVID-19 task force report 254 cases, just a percentile of the country’s caseload of 64,000 daily infections during the peak of the Omicron wave on Feb. 16.
Other epidemiological indicators such as hospital-bed occupancy rates (BOR), the death rate and the case-reproduction rate have also shown similar trends in decline, Luhut added.
“The conditions caused by the Omicron strain in Indonesia seem to continuously improve. This is due to the effective employment of relevant measures while simultaneously ensuring that economic recovery is maintained,” he proclaimed in a press briefing.
