Indonesia to extend restrictions amid rising Covid cases

Bloomberg

Indonesia is extending its mobility curbs for another week until August 2 as coronavirus cases remain high following near month-long restrictions.
Adjustments are made in order to allow small businesses to operate under strict health protocols, President Joko Widodo said in a briefing broadcast on YouTube. Traditional markets selling staple foods will open as normal, while shops selling non-food items and other small merchants are allowed to operate at half capacity and shorter trading hours. Dine-in can resume at food stalls and restaurants in outdoor areas under very strict protocols.
Indonesia’s confirmed Covid-19 cases have jumped back to around 40,000 a day after declining from over 56,000 on July 15, while fatality numbers remain at near record highs.
Southeast Asia’s biggest economy has become a new global virus epicenter after exceeding Brazil and India in daily case and death counts earlier this month. The nation registered 38,679 more cases and 1,266 new fatalities on Sunday, according to health ministry data.
Stage-four restrictions, which impose the tightest measures, are in place in 95 cities and regencies across Java and Bali, Luhut Panjaitan, who is in charge of coordinating pandemic response in the regions, said. Malls and department stores are allowed to operate at 25% capacity until 5 pm every day in 33 cities and regencies that fall under stage-three restrictions. To help mitigate the impact, the government will increase cash assistance to those who need it and small retailers are allowed to postpone their value-added tax payment.
The government plans to expand its testing coverage by requiring close contacts of those infected to undergo swab tests, Panjaitan said. Those who test positive will immediately be taken to isolation sites provided by the government to prevent a wider spread of infection.
More aggressive testing and contact tracing will help lower Indonesia’s positivity rate. Indonesia’s proportion of those tested who turn out to have been infected with the coronavirus is above 20%, much higher than the WHO recommendation of below 5%. Case numbers in Indonesia are likely four times higher than official figures, epidemiologists have said.
More than 90% of those who died from the virus were unvaccinated, Health Deputy Minister Dante Saksono Harbuwono said. More than 90% of new infections are caused by the highly transmissible delta variant, Panjaitan has said.