International visitors to Indonesia will now be required to quarantine for 10 days upon entry as announced by Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the Coordinator of Maritime and Investment Minister.
This new policy which begins Friday, December 3, has been implemented due to the anticipation of the new COVID-19 variant Indonesia.
In a statement read by Luhut on December 1, he was quoted saying, “We are adopting this policy, which will be subject to further evaluation as we try to get a deeper understanding of this new variant.”
Luhut also put a temporary ban on government officials from traveling abroad in hopes to curb the spread in the country. In his statement, he also urged the general public to postpone any international trips in the short term.
Bali previously had a policy of requiring international travelers to quarantine for 7 days and those from 11 countries with a high risk of Omicron variant transmission for 14 days. These countries included: Hong Kong, South Africa, Malawi, Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Lesotho.
In an attempt to curb the spread of the virus in the country, Luhut is pushing forward with the distribution of the booster shot. He stated that the third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine will be ready for senior citizens in January 2022.
To date, the country has reported 4,256,998 Coronavirus cases and as of the December 1 update, there were 278 new cases. Nearly 237 million doses have been given and 35.3% of its population is fully vaccinated.
According to Reuters Covid-19 tracker, Indonesia averaged about 1,406,354 doses administered each day and to date have reported over 143,000 coronavirus-related deaths.