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Indonesia looks past pandemic as Jokowi lifts emergency status
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Passengers use their gadgets on board a commuter line train at Bekasi Station, West Java, on June 12, 2023. The Transportation Ministry has issued a circular allowing healthy train passengers to travel without face masks while recommending that people still get COVID-19 vaccines. (Antara/Fakhri Hermansyah)
P
resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has declared an end to the national emergency status of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the country now looks forward to further economic recovery after more than three years of disruption and tragedy.
Announcing his decision that revoked the emergency status on Wednesday, Jokowi said “we are now entering an endemic period.”
“The government hopes that this decision can spur further [growth] in the national economy and improve the public’s quality of life, social [welfare] and economy,” he said, adding that the public should still maintain a healthy lifestyle and personal hygiene nevertheless.
The decision, according to Jokowi, was based on the fact that the daily caseload was close to zero and that around 99 percent of Indonesians had antibodies against the coronavirus, as revealed by recent national serology surveys.
Now that the virus has become endemic, the public will have to start paying for COVID-19 vaccines and treatment on their own or through insurance programs, such as the National Health Insurance (JKN).
People, health authorities said, should learn to live with COVID-19 as an endemic disease and take their own health precautions against it because the virus would not go away even when the emergency status is lifted.
Read also: TransJakarta and MRT drop mask mandates, commuter line to follow suit
