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Indonesia bans foreign tourist arrivals at Jakarta airport
- 02- 07- 2022 03:13 PM
JAKARTA: Indonesia has temporarily banned foreign tourists entering the country through Jakarta’s airport, the transport ministry said, in a bid to slow a spike in coronavirus infections driven by the Omicron variant.
The South-east Asian country has seen a jump in cases, with more than 36,000 infections recorded on Sunday and the bed occupancy rate at hospitals in the capital reaching 63 per cent.
The move to bar tourists flying to Jakarta comes just days after Bali welcomed the first international flight in nearly two years carrying foreign visitors.
The new regulations apply to foreign tourists and Indonesians who have travelled abroad for holidays, the ministry said in a statement released late on Sunday.
The decision to “temporarily restrict tourist arrivals” was intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus, said Novie Riyanto, director general for civil aviation at the ministry.
Tourists flying from abroad will still be able to arrive at Bali airport, as well as at Batam and Tanjung Pinang in the Riau Islands near Singapore.
Police have also implemented a curfew in downtown Jakarta from midnight to 4am as infections have kept climbing.
Indonesian officials have warned that the surge in cases driven by the Omicron variant may not peak until late February.
https://www.thesundaily.my/home/indonesia-bans-foreign-tourist-arrivals-at-jakarta-airport-YM8835753
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Can Sinovac protect Indonesia from the Omicron wave?
Most of the vaccinated in the archipelago have been given the Sinovac shot.
Published
As a third wave of the pandemic begins to take hold across Indonesia, there are questions over its use of China’s Sinovac, after a series of studies suggesting the most commonly used COVID-19 vaccine in the Southeast Asian nation is no match for the Omicron variant of coronavirus.
On Friday, the country recorded 32,211 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, the highest official number since the Delta wave began to fade in mid-August.
The positivity rate for individuals tested reached 10.29 percent on the same day, pushing Indonesia well beyond the 5 percent threshold the WHO uses to identify countries that have lost control of the virus.
Only 45.9 percent of Indonesia’s target population of 208 million people has been fully vaccinated compared with the global average of 53.4 percent, according to Our World in Data, and 79 percent of those are with Sinovac, according to Indonesia’s Ministry of Health.
The pace of inoculation has slowed further since the start of the year as many districts and provinces are refusing to use vaccines other than Sinovac due to complaints about the adverse effects of the Western-developed vaccines, raising concern that the Omicron wave could become a repeat of the Delta-driven second wave, which saw the hospital system collapse.
Studies raise doubts
In December, researchers at the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong published a study that found two doses of Sinovac did not produce sufficient antibodies to fight Omicron.
The study also revealed that Omicron significantly reduced the effectiveness of two shots of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which is built on new Messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which uses the genetic code of the coronavirus to trick the body into making viral proteins so the immune system starts to produce a defensive response. But the study stressed that a Pfizer booster was likely to be more effective than a third dose of Sinovac.
Another study conducted by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and published in the journal Emerging Microbes & Infections in the same month showed a “significant reduction” in the efficacy of a booster with Sinopharm, which, like Sinovac, is an inactivated vaccine that uses dead viral particles to expose the body’s immune system to COVID-19. “Overall, our study demonstrates that Omicron might more likely escape vaccine-induced immune protection compared to prototypes and other variants of concern,” the authors concluded.
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China’s return to lockdowns as it faces the highest number of infections since the start of the pandemic and its rush to develop mRNA vaccines is further exacerbating concerns about the efficacy of the vaccines in developing nations such as Indonesia that rely on Chinese vaccines and cannot afford lockdowns. Then there is Singapore’s announcement in January that people who opted for inactivated Chinese vaccines will need to receive an mRNA shot as a booster to be considered fully vaccinated.
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Three new studies from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in January also found that the Pfizer shot was effective in keeping most people who got Omicron out of hospital.
Dr Nadia Wiweko, the Ministry of Health spokesperson for COVID-19 vaccinations, says Indonesia plans to give boosters of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccines to those double-jabbed with Sinovac.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/7/can-sinovac-protect-indonesia-from-the-omicron-wave
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Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja Indonesia Correspondent
Updated 3 Mins Ago
JAKARTA – Indonesia is tightening social restrictions in Greater Jakarta, Bali, Bandung and Yogyakarta amid a spike in Covid-19 infections driven by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Authorities expect the surge in cases to peak later this month and the government said on Monday (Feb 7) that the number of people allowed in public places in the four cities will be restricted.
Restaurants, cafes, shopping malls must again limit visitors and operate at 60 per cent capacity, playgrounds and entertainment centres at 35 per cent capacity, and places of worship at 50 per cent.
Mr Luhut Pandjaitan, the senior minister in charge of coordinating efforts to contain Covid-19 on the country’s most populous island of Java as well as Bali, said the government will now look at ration for hospital bed occupation and contact tracing when evaluating if a city required tighter restrictions. Java and Bali account for 60 per cent of Indonesia’s more than 270 million population.
“Frankly, we do not want people to get frightened and the economy affected, while in fact the real problem may not actually be as bad. We are closely monitoring the situation this week. If things are good, we may ease restrictions next week,” Mr Luhut told reporters during an online media briefing on Monday.
About 65 per cent of patients in hospital for Covid-19 have no or mild symptoms, he disclosed, adding that they should instead self-isolate at home or be sent to a designated isolation facility.
Government data shows that currently 18,966 hospital beds are occupied by Covid-19 patients, which is less than 20 per cent of the 120,000 set aside for them. Indonesia has a total of about 400,000 hospital beds nationwide.
“It’s important the public understand that cases will spike. In other countries Omicron cases are doubled or tripled that of Delta. What is important is we could continue to comply with the health protocols so the hospitalisation and death numbers are low,” said health minister Budi Sadikin, who was also at the same online media briefing. Delta is the more deadly of the two coronavirus variants but Omicron is far more transmissible.
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Mr Budi noted that three regions in Indonesia had recorded daily cases surpassing their respective peaks during the Delta wave.
Jakarta had 14,600 daily new cases at the peak of the Delta wave but is reporting 15,800 now. Banten province, which had 3,900 then, has 4,800 now and Bali, with 1,900 previously, has 2,000 now.
Indonesia is much better prepared for a third Covid-19 wave with centralised isolation centres set up and ample supply of oxygen and medicines as well as medical staff.
In January, the country received its first shipment of two types of Covid-19 antiviral pills – molnupiravir made by Merck and paxlovid by Pfizer – and is set to start producing locally in April.
A telemedicine service in Jakarta, where patients can consult doctors and get free Covid-19 medicines delivered to their doorstep, will be expanded to Bandung, Semarang, Solo, Yogyakarta and Denpasar.
The world’s fourth-most populous nation has fully vaccinated 107 million people, with 160 million partially vaccinated as at the end of 2021.
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weehingthong 