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Indonesia talks with other countries, WHO about ending status of pandemic
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A health worker conducts an initial check before injecting a man with a dose of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a health center in Jakarta on Feb. 1. (AFP/Bay Ismoyo)
W
ith the government looking to move on from COVID-19 as cases continue to decline despite the dropping of pandemic curbs, Indonesia has begun looking for allies to lobby the World Health Organization into declaring the pandemic over.
“We are now consulting with other countries that are also looking to declare [COVID-19 as] endemic this year. [These countries] happen to be Japan and the United States,” Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Tuesday, as quoted by Kompas.com.
Since the government lifted its public activity restrictions (PPKM) at the tail-end of last year, the COVID-19 indicators in the country have continued to show signs of improvement. The Health Ministry told a press briefing on Monday that daily new cases fell almost 15 percent on Sunday compared with the previous week.
Other pandemic indicators, including the positivity rate, daily deaths and hospitalizations, have also declined, indicating that virus transmission and patients with severe cases remain relatively low.
The country’s daily caseload means that Indonesia averaged 0.43 new cases per million people as of Monday, according to Oxford University's Our World in Data. This puts Indonesia below the US’ 1.78 cases per million people, and far below Japan’s 56.6 cases per million people.
Similarly, Indonesia recorded less than 0.01 deaths per million, compared with the US' 0.2 and Japan’s 0.4.
Read also: Indonesia to talk with WHO about ending pandemic status
