Airlangga Adds Five New Provinces Implementing The Micro-Scale Community Activity Restrictions Area

JAKARTA - The government has added five new areas that are included in the Enforcement of Micro-scale Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM) in the context of controlling COVID-19. Previously, as many as 15 regions or provinces had already entered into PPKM implementation. Thus, the total is 20 provinces.

Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Airlangga Hartarto said that the implementation of micro-PPKM in the last few weeks has made active cases and recovered ones, and the fatality rate had decreased.

Of the 15 provinces that carried out PPKM, said Airlangga, almost all provinces experienced a decline, namely Bali, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), North Sumatra, East Kalimantan, South Sumatra, South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), DKI Jakarta, West Java, Central Java, and DI Yogyakarta.

However, said Airlangga, for Banten, the case was slightly higher. This is because the implementation of PPKM in Banten was originally only in Tangerang Raya, but now it is all over the province. In fact, yesterday, there was also massive testing in Banten.

As for the development of COVID-19 in the country, namely, Indonesia's active cases are relatively better than global active cases. Where Indonesia has a single-digit active case or 7.61 percent. Meanwhile, at the global level, the figure is 17.29 percent. Then the case of national recovery has reached 89.68 percent compared to global 80.53 percent.

However, Airlangga admitted, related to the national death rate, it was indeed still higher, namely 2.72, while the global figure was 2.18.

Airlangga said that after seeing the development of the government to enlarge the provinces that took part in PPKM by looking at the aspects of recovered cases, died or active cases, and others.

"The government added five more regions, namely North Kalimantan, Aceh, South Sumatra, Riau, and Papua. So that in total there are 20 provinces participating in PPKM for the period from 6 to 19 April. And the government adds and extends the next stage of PPKM or the fifth stage for the next 2 weeks", he said, quoted from the Presidential Secretariat YouTube, Monday, April 5.

As is known, previously, the government has extended the micro-scale PPKM until April 5, 2021. The government also had time to add five new areas to cover micro-scale PPKM areas, namely South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara, and West Nusa Tenggara so that it became 15 provinces.

Previously, Airlangga said that the government planned to tighten the criteria for imposing restrictions on micro-scale community activities (the micro-scale PPKM) after April 5, 2021.

Furthermore, Airlangga said that the policy was carried out based on directions from President Joko Widodo (Jokowi).

"In the future, of course, we will continue to improve, and earlier in the direction of the President (Jokowi) the criteria were tightened. So after April 5, 2021, we will tighten the criteria for this Micro-scale PPKM", he said.