People On Vacation During A Pandemic, Experts: The Government Is Ready To Track Anyone Who Is Positive COVID-19

Thousands of vehicles heading out of Jakarta. (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - The COVID-19 pandemic has not dampened people's intention to travel outside the city to spend the holiday period. In fact, before the momentum of the long holiday at the end of October, the government had asked the public to just spend time off at home.

Seeing this situation, an epidemiologist from Australia's Griffith University, Dicky Budiman assessed that the government should have restricted mobility between regions from the start. According to him, this is effective in preventing people from traveling in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We must know that our pandemic situation is not well controlled, this means that restrictions must be made and obeyed. This restriction means mobility and interaction in all regions," Dicky said when contacted by VOI, Saturday, October 31.

He also assessed that the government must make a targeted mitigation plan to prevent a surge. This not only applies to long holidays, but until Indonesia gets out of the COVID-19 pandemic. One way, by limiting activities.

"Activities are allowed, but they are still limited. For example in Melbourne, Australia, people can only move up to 25 kilometers after the case becomes single digit. So there are limits that must be done to prevent potential spread," he explained.

Furthermore, Dicky said, after the long holiday at the end of October, the government must start working hard to explore the potential clusters of COVID-19 transmission in the community and anticipate it. In addition, the government through the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) must be able to increase the number of COVID-19 testing and contact tracing.

Moreover, he considered, Indonesia is still lagging behind the virus. Because after a spread since the beginning of the year, the country has only been able to reach a number of tests above 30,000 in recent months.

"Our latest national data is already at 38 thousand. But that's only recently and we are relatively late when we see from the past seven months our capacity is approaching that target," he explained.

"This means that if we look at the speed of the spread of the virus, we cannot match it and this is logical. Because only recently have we experienced increased testing," added Dicky.

Thus, in view of this, increasing the number of testing as an intervention step is imperative. Moreover, seeing the current positivity rate, it is still high, reaching 14.3 percent.

"So the testing must be increased to 2-3 times. It must be monitored from the existing indicators. Then there should be no cases of death. Because if there are still cases of death, it is indicated that we are still lagging behind this virus," he said.

Long Weekend Holidays

It is known that the government made 28 October and 30 October leave with the Prophet Muhammad SAW's birthday. So there is a long holiday for five days, from October 28 to November 1.

The momentum of this holiday is then widely used by people to travel outside the city by a number of modes of transportation, one of which is the train. Based on data from PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) Daop 1 Jakarta, as of Friday, October 31 yesterday there were 30,470 train passengers departing from Gambir Station, Pasar Senen Station, and Jakarta Kota Station.

"The passengers' favorite destinations this time are Yogyakarta, Bandung, Central Java and East Java," said Eva Chairunisa, Head of Public Relations of PT KAI Daop 1 Jakarta, in a written statement quoted on Friday, October 30.

In addition, on that day, PT Jasa Marga (Persero) Tbk also recorded that there were 509,140 moving vehicles leaving Jakarta on long holidays with vehicle movements starting on 27 October.

"The total volume of traffic leaving Jakarta has increased by 40.3 percent compared to normal traffic," said PT Jasa Marga's Corporate Communication & Community Development Group Head, Dwimawan Heru, in a written statement, Friday, October 30.

The number of vehicles moving to leave Jakarta is the cumulative flow of traffic from several main toll gates (GT), namely GT Cikampek Utama and GT Kalihurip Utama (East direction), GT Cikupa (West direction) and GT Ciawi (South direction).