INDONESIA increased its mandatory quarantine period for all international arrivals from seven to 10 days effective yesterday to curb the spread of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.
Reports in Jakarta Post said the government earlier this week banned foreigners that have been in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Eswatini, Malawi, Angola, Zambia and Hong Kong within two weeks before departing to Indonesia.
The exceptions are Indonesians returning from these countries, who are subjected to a 14 day-quarantine.
Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, who is leading the government's Covid-19 response in Java and Bali, said the longer quarantine period was ordered by President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo.
Meanwhile, earlier reports said the Health Ministry was working on enhancing its Covid-19 surveillance to effectively detect and contain the spread of Omicron at an early stage as more countries across the globe detect the new virus variant.
Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said authorities are aiming to improve its relatively poor contact tracing by working together with village supervisory non-commissioned officers (Babinsa) and public order officers (Bhabinkamtibmas).
"We need to strengthen our contact tracing and increase the number of patients' close contacts who were tested for Covid-19 so we can find new cases as soon as possible," Budi said.
In another report in The Jakarta Post, it said the government has decided to allow pilgrims to travel to Saudi Arabia for umrah later this month, a move that experts say is risky given the threat of the emerging Omicron variant.
The Religious Affairs Ministry's haj and umrah director general Hilman Latief said there were no plans to restrict umrah pilgrims at the moment and the first batch of pilgrims were expected to depart in the middle of this month.
"We'll push through with the plan [to send umrah pilgrims], since there is currently no travel ban between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia," Hilman said.