Compared with the past two years, Anang Riswanta, 29, from Sukoharjo, Central Java, said he was able to experience a “more joyful and comfortable Ramadan”.

“Concerns about COVID-19 transmission are no longer top of the mind for my family, as the number of infections continues to drop,” Anang told The Jakarta Post on Friday. “This has allowed us to be more focused on our fasting and worship for the holy month.”

Both he and his wife have received three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, the farming professional said.

The Ramadan festivities have also become much more pronounced in his village this year, Anang added, as the community recently decided to resume its tradition of buka bersama, the annual breaking-of-the-fast gatherings.

He also said he could take part in daily mass prayers at the local mosque, including tarawih (Ramadan evening prayers), sometimes even with his one-year-old son in tow. Last year, he rarely joined the ritual for fear of contracting COVID-19.

Meanwhile, Ridwan Al Aziz, a 25-year-old teacher residing in Bogor, West Java, said that this year’s Ramadan was particularly special for him, as he planned to spend two weeks of fasting and the Idul Fitri holiday at home with his parents in Kebumen, Central Java.

It will be the first time he has gone home to his parents, in the homeward exodus known as mudik, since the pandemic started in 2020.

“After two years of the mudik ban, I’ll finally be able to spend Ramadan and Idul Fitri with my parents this year. I’m very excited to bring my wife and my three-month-old daughter for the first time,” he told the Post on Friday.

Homebound rush

The government has eased many COVID-19 curbs for this year’s fasting season, following significant improvements in Indonesia’s pandemic situation from the Omicron variant-fueled wave that hit the country in January.

On Saturday, the country recorded 1,468 new COVID-19 cases, down by 98 percent from the 64,718 cases it registered at the peak of the third wave on Feb. 16. The number of active cases also dropped by 83 percent since the peak of the Omicron wave, from around 445,000 cases to 74,000.

For the first time in two years, the government has allowed Muslims to perform prayers at public houses of worship without physical-distancing requirements or a limit on the number of worshipers allowed to gather at any one time.

It has also allowed people to embark on the mudik exodus for Idul Fitri, marking the first time in two years since travel restrictions were eased for holiday festivities.

Last week, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced that there would be four days of mandatory collective leave for the Lebaran holiday, on top of the Idul Fitri national holidays that fall on May 2 and 3.

This arrangement means that many offices nationwide will effectively be closed for the first week of May – much longer than last year, when the government only allowed one day of mandatory collective leave as a way to discourage the general public from skirting the mudik ban.

As host to the largest population of Muslims worldwide, authorities are expecting 85 million people to embark on mudik during the upcoming Idul Fitri season, with some 14 million travelers set to leave Greater Jakarta alone. This figure is much higher than pre-pandemic levels, when some 30 million people participated in the annual tradition.

Diminishing concerns

Over the past two years, high public mobility had become the bane of the national healthcare system, as it almost always resulted in another wave of COVID-19 infections. Previous spikes in transmission usually occurred following a long holiday period, when people traveled en masse or visited relatives in the regions.

The country saw its worst run of infections in July of last year, six weeks after millions of people participated in the mudik exodus to celebrate Idul Fitri, in spite of a prevailing travel ban. This spike in movement increased the spread of the deadly Delta variant of COVID-19 nationwide, with daily infection figures spiking by nearly 400 percent.

High mobility around last year’s Christmas and New Year holiday season, when authorities clocked nearly 6 million people traveling around the country, also fueled the spread of the highly contagious Omicron strain of COVID-19, which triggered Indonesia’s third wave of infections.

Officials including Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin have been optimistic about the potential of fewer infections during the upcoming Idul Fitri holiday, while others insist that case numbers will continue on a downward trend.

“Based on our observations, the main cause of infection surges is not the holiday itself, but the emergence of new variants [of concern]. I’m certain that we won’t see another wave of infections after the Idul Fitri holiday, but we must also pray that another [dangerous] variant doesn’t emerge,” Budi said in a seminar last week.

Meanwhile, health experts remain cautious. Epidemiologist Riris Andono Ahmad from Gadjah Mada University said there was still a very real possibility that high public mobility during the holiday season might cause another infection spike, although he also acknowledged that the risk was much lower this year.

“Most of our population has gained some sort of immunity to COVID-19, either through vaccination or natural infection,” Riris told the Post on Friday.

As of Sunday, 77.5 percent of Indonesia’s targeted population of 208 million people had been fully vaccinated, while some 12 percent have received a third booster shot.