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THE INDONESIAN government has reduced the quarantine period for international travelers to five days, from seven days earlier.
The step was taken in response to a rise in the number of cases from local transmission, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, in the capacity as deputy chief of the Committee for COVID-19 Handling and National Economic Recovery (KPC PEN), noted in a press statement released online on Monday.
“There needs to be a change in strategy due to the higher number of cases from local transmission. To that end, the government changes the quarantine period, from seven to five days on condition that Indonesian and foreign nationals entering Indonesia should have been fully vaccinated,” he emphasized.
Pandjaitan noted that Indonesian nationals that had received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine must undergo a seven-day quarantine upon arrival from abroad.
This is because the variant of COVID-19 that infected most of the international travelers is Omicron. Furthermore, various researches also suggest that the incubation period of this variant is about three days, he remarked.
The step to lower the quarantine period has also taken into account the need to reallocate the government’s resources.
“The buildings earlier used to quarantine international travelers will be turned into isolation centers along with the expected high demand from confirmed positive patients without symptoms and with mild symptoms,” he noted. [antaranews/photo special]
