The Jakarta Post
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsFive future strategies for fighting COVID-19
Worse, the vaccines do not provide full immunity against infection and some available vaccines are less effective against the new B.1.351 (Beta) variant first detected in South Africa, and possibly other variants as well. Accordingly, public health systems need to plan for the possibility that COVID-19 will be her to stay as a recurrent seasonal disease.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Set as preferred source
I
t seems we may have to reconsider our optimism, which blossomed thanks to the mass vaccination program, following the recent Idul Fitri holiday in mid-May. The likelihood of achieving herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2 has remained low due to two important factors: not all individuals in Indonesia (and elsewhere) have access to vaccines, and many eligible individuals are refusing vaccination.
Worse, the vaccines do not provide full immunity against infection and some available vaccines are less effective against the new B.1.351 (Beta) variant first detected in South Africa, and possibly other variants as well. Accordingly, public health systems need to plan for the possibility that COVID-19 will be her to stay as a recurrent seasonal disease.
Yet, we may be content with the anticipatory measures of local administrations like Jakarta’s. The capital city has intensified its contact tracing and treatment efforts, following its mudik (exodus) restrictions and as 1.5 million mudik travelers return to Greater Jakarta after celebrating Idul Fitri in their hometowns.
The Jakarta Health Agency has prepared health facilities and increased the bed capacity of isolation and intensive care units. More than 6,600 hospital beds have been allocated for the treatment of COVID-19 patients (The Jakarta Post, May 22, 2021).
Furthermore, the city has cut the operational hours of the MRT Jakarta and the Commuter Line services. It is also monitoring returning Idul Fitri travelers, has implemented “micro” (localized) lockdowns in certain neighborhoods to anticipate “Idul Fitri clusters” and has enhanced border checks at 14 posts.
A week after Idul Fitri on May 13-14, apart from increasing its testing rate, Jakarta has also managed to cut its single-day positivity rate from 13.8 percent on May 13 to 6.6 percent on May 21 and has generally maintained this rate.
Despite these achievements, the fight against COVID-19 is still far from over. A pulmonologist at a city-owned hospital said that, apart from anxiety and mental health issues, many patients were suffering from social stigma. This confirms a study I and my colleagues conducted in September 2020, which found that 74 percent of doctors encountered individuals who had concealed their health condition for fear of stigmatization by friends and family. People who do so could exacerbate the country’s struggle to contain the virus through testing and tracing.
