Earlier this year, Indonesia barred all foreign visitors from entering, although some exemptions were made for business travellers.
Now international visitors have been banned for a total of two weeks, amid the new Coronavirus strain.
Since registering its first case in March, the world’s fourth most populous country globally, Indonesia, has struggled to control the novel Coronavirus’s spread, with 719,219 confirmed infections and 21,452 deaths.
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Earlier this year, Indonesia barred all foreign visitors from entering, although some exemptions were made for business travellers. International visitors have been banned for a total of two weeks, amid the new Coronavirus strain.
Although the new strain has not been detected in Indonesia yet, authorities have taken urgent preventative measures to prevent it from taking hold in the country. The remote Java island has struggled tremendously with the onslaught of Covid-19 on its economy.
In recent weeks, Indonesia health care system has been under intense pressure, as hospitals run out of capacity. On Monday, senior health ministry official Abdul Kadir said hospitals were at risk of being overwhelmed by a potential surge in year-end holiday infections, with occupancy already hitting 84 per cent in the capital Jakarta. Hospital occupancy is currently at 83 per cent in West Java, Indonesia’s most populous province, and 77 per cent in East Java, he said.
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This suggests that the red zone is in these regions. The capacity of the bed is now in the red zone. Hospitals would be overwhelmed by an increase, “This means that these regions are in the red zone. The bed capacity is now in the red zone. Any uptick will overwhelm hospitals,” he said, according to Reuters.
A total of 589,978 Indonesian citizens have recovered from the disease, after 6,302 new cases of Covid-19 were confirmed on Monday.
