JAKARTA, Indonesia — Nearly three years after Indonesian officials announced the first confirmed case of the new coronavirus, the country’s leaders said on Friday they would lift all coronavirus-related restrictions across the country.
Indonesian President Jokowi Widodo said that Indonesia's new crown epidemic has been brought under control after observing an improvement in the situation over the past 10 months, which allowed the country to abandon the large-scale social restrictions on crowds and movement of people adopted in April 2020.
However, Widodo called on people to remain cautious and vigilant as the coronavirus is not yet completely over. He told a news conference at the presidential palace in the capital, Jakarta, that the practice of wearing masks in crowds and enclosed spaces should continue, but it was not required.
During the coronavirus period, his government did not implement a national lockdown, but adopted two systems: large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) and a tiered system of restrictions on public movement (PPKM). Both policies are critical in the government's pandemic response.
In April 2020, a month after the first case was recorded, the world's fourth most populous country first implemented PSBB as a compromise to growing calls for a strict lockdown. In July 2021, when a second wave of infections caused by the mutation of the delta virus swept the country, it was re-incorporated into the emergency PPKM plan.
The state of emergency was subsequently replaced by the four-level PPKM system, which Widodo announced would be abandoned immediately.
Nearly all Indonesians have developed antibodies against the virus that causes the coronavirus, a study has found, boosting confidence that Southeast Asia's largest economy can avoid a surge in cases.
In July this year, researchers from the Indonesian Ministry of Health and the University of Indonesia examined blood samples from 20,501 people from 100 cities in the Indonesian archipelago and found that 98.5% of the respondents had anti-viral antibodies due to being vaccinated or having been infected with the virus in the past.
This is 10.2 percentage points higher than the December 2021 survey result (87.8%). The country plans to conduct a third survey next month.
The government will also shift its response to an "endemic" approach, in which the virus remains present in a community but becomes controllable as immunity builds, Airlangga Hartarto, chairman of the coronavirus response committee, said at a separate press conference on Friday.
According to World Health Organization standards, Indonesia's risk assessment status is "Level 1".
Hartato, who is also the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, said: "Nationally, this means that COVID-19 has reached the epidemic stage in Indonesia."
He said the Ministry of Health's upcoming serological survey will be used as the basis for future mitigation policies.
Indonesia has largely recovered from the coronavirus flooding, one of the worst in Southeast Asia. In July 2021, there were about 56,700 new cases every day, setting a record at the time, and hospitals in Java were overcrowded. In February this year, Omicron hit a new high of more than 64,700 new infections.
Indonesia confirmed 552 cases of new coronavirus on Friday, and 10 people died. Overall, Vietnam has more than 6.7 million infections, second only to Vietnam in Southeast Asia.
Widodo said there were 1.7 daily cases per 1 million people, a weekly positivity rate of 3.35%, and a death rate of 2.39%, all below World Health Organization standards.
The country’s death toll stands at 160,583, ranking second in Asia and 11th in the world.However, scientists' data suggests the death toll may be much higher than reported because people who die from acute coronavirus symptoms but have not been diagnosed or tested are not counted in official death tolls.
Of the 234.6 million people in Indonesia who are eligible for vaccination, about 74.47% have received two doses of the vaccine, about 29% have received the first booster dose, and only 0.5% have received the second booster dose. #INDONESIA##Where does the new coronavirus originate#
