LUHUT: BEWARE OF THE THIRD WAVE OF COVID-19 DURING CHRISTMAS & NEW YEAR

COORDINATING Minister for Maritime Affairs, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan appealed to the public to be aware of the third wave of COVID-19 which was triggered by transmission during Christmas and New Year celebrations.

“We urge the entire community to obey because we are still on guard against the possibility of a third wave that will occur on Christmas and the upcoming New Year, we must be careful,” said Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan when delivering a press statement related to the PPKM evaluation which was followed from Kanal Presidential Secretariat YouTube from Jakarta, Monday (10/18) afternoon.

Based on the results of weekly evaluations, said Luhut, Indonesian President Joko Widodo paid attention to community activities that often ignore health protocols, such as weddings, tourist attractions and other activities that trigger crowds.

“The Coordinator for the Enforcement of Emergency Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM) for the Java and Bali Islands said the decreasing daily confirmed cases in Indonesia caused the national and Java-Bali active cases to continue to decline. Currently there are only 18,000 cases nationally. For Java and Bali, there are 7 thousand cases,” he said.

Luhut remarked that this achievement had dropped drastically when compared to the peak of the second wave of COVID-19 which reached 570 thousand active cases on July 15, 2021.

In addition, he said, the situation that continues to improve is also reflected in the number of deaths from COVID-19 in several provinces which have been reduced to zero cases.

“On October 17, 2021, DKI Jakarta, West Java, Yogyakarta and Bali recorded zero deaths and other provinces in Java and Bali only recorded less than five deaths per day,” he stated.

Luhut advised that this achievement should be maintained with public compliance with health protocols and vaccinations.

“But it still needs to be anticipated considering that the Java Bali vaccination coverage has only reached 43%. We want the elderly vaccination coverage to reach 70 percent in the next two months,” he concluded. [antaranews]