Government Monitors Year-End COVID-19 Conditions, If Safe, Will Not Apply Tightening Brakes

JAKARTA - Director of Prevention and Control of Direct Infectious Diseases at the Ministry of Health, Dr. Siti Nadia Tarmizi, said the government would monitor the development of the situation and condition of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia by the end of the year to decide on tightening handling policies.

"Of course, the escalation that we are seeing is the progress of the rate of transmission, the mobility of the people. If it is still at a safe level, the government will not tighten it like yesterday," he said, quoted by Antara, Tuesday, November 16.

Nadia emphasized that the Indonesian government adopted the concept of "gas and brakes", which is to relax when cases are under control and step on the brakes again if there is an increase in cases.

"If at the end of the year we see a very significant increase in mobility, the government will definitely take steps, at least to brake again. Our policy is to brake and gas, when to brake, when to gas," he said.

The government will continue to use the term PPKM in implementing COVID-19 control policies in the community. He called PPKM a vigilance tool to see the condition of COVID-19 transmission in the field.

"The PPKM is a tool for our vigilance because the rate of transmission and response capacity are also assessed there. So every two weeks we provide feedback to the city districts because the PPKM level goes up, meaning that if it goes up, the test is lacking, the tracing is lacking, or the case is is increasing. So this PPKM keeps us as an alarm in our system," he said.

As a measure to anticipate the increase in community mobility at the end of the year, the government will tighten policies for travelers and people who travel to ensure that during the Christmas and New Year holidays there is no spike in cases.