“By 7 p.m. on Monday, the number of flights at Soekarno-Hatta airport had reached 454, higher than the 430 flights recorded the previous day,” Muhammad Awaluddin, the president director of airport operator PT Angkasa Pura II, said on Tuesday as quoted by kompas.com.

Awaluddin said the figure was quite surprising, because Sunday was usually the busiest time for the airport. "However, on Monday, the first day of the transitional PSBB in Jakarta, flight traffic was 5 percent higher than on Sunday," he said.

Awaluddin also explained that the increase in the number of flights at the airport, which is located in Tangerang, Banten, had a direct impact on the 19 airports operated by PT Angkasa Pura. 

He said the rise in air traffic was a sign of growing public trust in air transportation in line with the safe travel campaign run by Soekarno-Hatta International Airport over the last three months.

Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan announced the reintroduction of the transitional PSBB in the capital on Sunday, almost a month after reimposing the strict PSBB on Sept. 14. The transitional PSBB will stay in place at least until Oct. 25.

“We implemented the emergency brake policy [by reinstating the full-fledged PSBB] for about a month, because the number of cases had been getting out of control. After the number of new cases became more stable, we started to release the brake gradually, step by step,” Anies said in a written statement on Sunday. 

Anies said the decision was based on the number of daily new cases, the daily mortality rate and the trend of total active cases, which had flattened during the past few weeks. 

From Sept. 11 to 25, Jakarta recorded 16,606 new positive cases, or a 31.74 percent increase from the previous week, while between Sept. 25 and Oct. 9, it recorded 15,437 new infections or a 22.39 percent increase of new cases.

During the transitional period, workplaces in 11 essential industries — including health, food, energy, communications, finance, logistics and daily needs retail — will be allowed to operate at full capacity, while nonessential businesses may allow up to 50 percent of their employees to work on premises.

Restaurants will be allowed to serve dine-in customers at 50 percent of their maximum capacity, while houses of worship are also allowed to reopen. 

Anies said that, during the new transitional PSBB, businesses that were allowed to open had to record each visitor in a physical or digital guest book to assist with contact-tracing of positive cases. 

Visitor details to be recorded include the name, phone number, identity card number (NIK) as well as the time of the visit. The data must be handed over to the Jakarta administration regularly. (iwa)