However, they also insist that the public should remain disciplined in following health protocols, underscoring the role of the masses in ensuring success in the pandemic response.

Health authorities reported 75 new cases of the Omicron variant on Saturday, bringing the total tally of Omicron cases to 414, with 31 of these being reported as cases of local transmission.

This came amid an increase in overall COVID-19 figures, with Indonesia recording more than 500 daily cases on a couple of occasions in the past week. The seven-day moving average of infection has also jumped by 100 percent compared with the previous week, a Health Ministry report revealed on Saturday.

Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan, who heads the pandemic control in Java and Bali, said on Monday that Indonesia, however, was still on top of its COVID-19 situation because the spike in cases was down to international arrivals. Many of them, he said, had tested positive upon entering the country.

According to the Health Ministry report, the country welcomed over 790,000 international arrivals from Jan. 1 to Friday. Of these arrivals, some 21,000 had tested positive for COVID-19. It remains unclear how many of the cases are Omicron infections.

Read also: Government urges people not to travel abroad as goal of reaching endemic status in sight

Despite the increase, Luhut said, the number of COVID-19 deaths remains under control, while the national vaccination rate is also rising.

“Our health system today is ready to face the new threat, but preventive steps remain key,” Luhut added. “Don’t go overseas in the next two to three weeks, so that you will not bring the disease back with you.”

Change of strategy

Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto said the government would separate the data on coronavirus variants recorded at entry points -- including airports, seaports and land crossings -- from the locally transmitted cases because international arrivals had been the largest contributor to the uptick in COVID-19 cases.

Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the test positivity rate for international arrivals was 65 times higher than that of locally transmitted cases.

“This has strengthened our hypothesis that most of the confirmed cases were in fact from international arrivals,” he said.

Read also: Govt to start giving booster shots to public next week as Omicron threat looms

Having observed 414 Omicron patients in the country, Budi said that an Omicron spike would not cause a strain on the health system despite having the potential to cause significantly more cases compared with the devastating second wave of infections last July that was fueled by the Delta variant.

According to Budi, only two out of the 414 patients developed more than mild symptoms. The two patients had since been discharged from hospital.

“So we will shift the focus of the Health Ministry's strategy from hospitals to home [isolation] because most of [the Omicron patients] will not require hospitalization,” he said.

Questionable super-immunity

The number of Omicron cases has grown since the country detected the first case on Dec. 16, 2021.

Indonesia recorded 136 Omicron cases in December, but the number surged following the year-end holidays, to 278 cases in just eight days.

Despite this, it is a relatively milder increase compared with other countries ravaged by the virus.

The United States and United Kingdom, for instance, saw their seven-day averages of infection rise from under 700 and above 300 cases per million people in early December, respectively, to more than 2,600 cases and 2,100 cases per million people as of Sunday, according to Oxford University's Our World in Data.

Some health officials and experts have attributed Indonesia’s relatively low increase in COVID-19 infections down to the fact that 86.6 percent of Indonesians already have immunity against the COVID-19 virus, either through vaccination or infection, a phenomenon dubbed "super-immunity".

This was first revealed in a government serology survey, conducted in November and December last year in 100 cities and regencies.

But Masdalina Pane of the Indonesian Epidemiologists Association (PAEI) rejected the notion, saying that the Omicron variant has the potential to re-infect those already having immunity against COVID-19.

“Those that have been fully inoculated and even those that have had booster shots [are being infected], so there is no correlation between the so-called 'super-immunity’ and the Omicron variant,” Masdalina said.

Read also: Experts warns of upcoming third wave as Omicron spreads

Epidemiologist Riris Andono Ahmad of Gadjah Mada University, meanwhile, urged caution in regard to the super-immunity concept, saying that it might lead to the public becoming overconfident and disregarding health protocols.

Other countries, Riris said, were currently struggling to curb the Omicron variant, despite boasting higher vaccination rates or having previously recorded higher numbers of coronavirus cases.

“Even if it’s a fact that 86.6 percent of Indonesians have immunity, would that mean we are protected from the Omicron variant? We cannot just assume that,” Riris said.