The President is set to meet leaders from eight other ASEAN nations and their dialogue partners for the 38^th and 39^th ASEAN summits virtually this week, hosted by Brunei Darussalam as this year’s chair of the regional organization.

The three-day summits will begin Tuesday, and leaders are expected to discuss the implementation of the ASEAN Travel Corridor Arrangement Framework after launching a declaration about it in November last year.

First proposed by Jokowi in June last year, the travel corridor is aimed at facilitating essential business travel that implements strict health protocols. At the last ASEAN Summit in November, Jokowi expressed his wish that the framework could be implemented in the first quarter of this year, but the second wave of coronavirus infections that swept the region, exacerbated by the more transmissible Delta variant, have delayed its implementation. 

At the peak of the second wave, Indonesia saw more than 56,000 daily new cases in July, with more than half a million active cases, grinding its health system to a halt. Other Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, also battled record infections and deaths.

“We have seen new hope in the last week as COVID-19 cases in the ASEAN region fell by 14 percent, much better than the world average at 1 percent,” Jokowi said on Monday at the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit, which was held ahead of the ASEAN summits.

Read also: Jokowi wants ASEAN travel corridor in place by early 2021

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