Government Extends Micro PPKM Until April 5, Its Coverage Is Expanded To 15 Provinces

JAKARTA - The government has extended the implementation period for restrictions on micro-scale community activities (PPKM), from March 23 to April 5, 2021.

Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Chair of the Committee for Handling COVID-19 and National Economic Recovery, Airlangga Hartarto announced that PPKM Micro will be expanded to five regions. Thus, a total of 15 regions have implemented Micro PPKM.

"The government has added five additional regions, namely South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara and West Nusa Tenggara," said Airlangga in a virtual press conference on Youtube EkonomiRI, Friday, March 19.

Previously, the government set the implementation of micro PPKM in 10 provinces, namely DKI Jakarta, West Java, Banten, Central Java, East Java, Yogyakarta Special Region, and Bali, then expanded to North Sumatra, East Kalimantan and South Sulawesi.

Airlangga said that the parameters for the government to decide which regions to implement micro PPKM were still the same, namely fulfilling one of the four parameters.

The four parameters are the active case rate above the national average, the cure rate below the national average, the death rate above the national average, and the hospital occupancy rate for ICU and isolation rooms above 70 percent.

Meanwhile, based on the results of the implementation of micro PPKM in 10 provinces, Airlangga said the number of active cases that contributed to the national figure had decreased.

"Of course we also see that with PPKM Mini in 10 provinces it has succeeded in braking almost all of the addition of active cases," said Airlangga.

As of March 18, active cases of COVID-19 were 131,753 or 9.2 percent of the total positive cases of 1,443,853. This figure is better with the world's active case rate of 17.23 percent.

The number of cures was 1,272,958 cases or 87.9 percent compared to the world average of 80.62 percent. There were 39,142 cases died or 2.7 percent compared to the world average of 2.2 percent.