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Government outlines endemic strategy for COVID-19, but experts urge caution
The government is preparing a strategy on how to live with COVID-19 on expectation that the disease will become endemic in the country, in a policy shift away from the current approach of imposing partial lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus.
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Limited capacity: A shopping mall in Bogor, West Java, prepares to welcome back visitors following the easing of public activity restrictions (PPKM) from level 4 to level 3 on Saturday. Only vaccinated visitors are allowed to enter malls, which can operate at a limited capacity. (Antara/Arif Firmansyah)
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he government is preparing a strategy on how to live with COVID-19 in expectation that the disease will become endemic in the country, in a policy shift away from the current approach of imposing partial lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus.
Experts, however, have said that Indonesia is still a long way from entering the endemic stage, which is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a disease outbreak that is consistently present but limited to particular regions, making the spread of the disease predictable. They also urged the government not to lower its guard given the unpredictable nature of the virus.
Since Indonesia first detected its first COVID19 case on March last year, the government has never signaled any interest in pursuing an elimination strategy, which was adopted by some countries such as New Zealand and China, by imposing hard lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus.
Instead, Indonesia’s COVID-19 response largely followed an approach dubbed by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo as “gas and brake”, with restrictive measures periodically eased or tightened depending on the latest developments in the country.
The Delta surge that hit Indonesia in June prompted the government to impose emergency restrictions, which have since evolved into multi-tiered public activity restrictions (PPKM) that have been eased several times.
National COVID-19 task force chief Ganip Warsito said on Wednesday that the government’s strategy of controlling the outbreak into an endemic-level disease rested on three pillars, namely enforcing health protocols; stringent testing, tracing and treatment (the so-called “3Ts”); and ramping up the vaccination rollout across the country.
“With these three [pillars], Insha Allah [God’s willing] we can control [the spread of] COVID-19 and turn it from a pandemic into an endemic [disease], so that we safely coexist with COVID-19 and remain productive in our daily activities,” said Ganip.
