More And More Students Who Are Exposed To COVID Have Not Made The Government Intend To Stop Face-to-face Schools

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JAKARTA - The Coordinator for the Enforcement of Restrictions on Community Activities for Java and Bali, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, ensures that the government will continue to continue face-to-face learning (PTM) in schools, even though COVID-19 cases continue to increase.

The Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment in an online press statement on the results of a limited meeting on the evaluation of the Implementation of Restrictions on Community Activities (PPKM) in Jakarta, said that there had been no extraordinary events in the distribution of the Omicron variant.

"Learning is still being carried out. If there are extraordinary things, a separate decision will be taken. So we have no plans to stop face-to-face, face-to-face schools," said Luhut, Monday, January 24.

According to Luhut, although the daily cases in the past week have continued to increase, the number of cases is considered relatively still under control.

This is because the number of confirmed and daily active cases is still lower by more than 90 percent when compared to the peak cases of the delta variant.

Luhut said that since omicron was discovered a month ago in Indonesia, until now there have been no signs of an exponential increase in cases, as has happened in other parts of the country.

The position of the bed occupanty ratio (BOR) in Java Bali, continued Luhut, is also much better than the initial increase in the delta variant, thus providing a wider space before reaching the alarming 60 percent limit.

Likewise, daily death cases in all areas of Java and Bali for the last 14 days are also still at a fairly low level.

Meanwhile, cases caused by foreign travel agents (PPLN) are already below 10 percent of the total national cases, so that local transmission in Indonesia is more dominant than the previous time.

"But once again the government remains vigilant, especially seeing the effective reproduction rate starting to increase. Currently the number of neighborhood units (RT) in Java has reached 1 and Bali has more than 1," he said.

The government also continues to monitor the trend of the positivity rate. Although overall, PCR and antigen, the positivity rate is still below the WHO standard of 5 percent, but the PCR positivity rate has increased to 9 percent.