The main prerequisites are that herd immunity must firstbe achieved, vaccination must be ramped up to 2.5 million doses per day, andthe daily number of new infections is less than five thousand, Hartarto notedin a statement here on October 7.
Indonesia's COVID-19 response strategy, which underscoresupstream and downstream handling, has proven to be yielding good results, asmirrored in the value of the Reproduction Number (Rt) of 0.60.
This figure is relatively lower than the global Rt andthat of other countries, according to him.
Singapore's figure is 1.44; the UK, 0.97; the world,0.92; America, 0.9; India, 0.86; the Philippines, 0.85; and Malaysia, 0.81. Hence,Indonesia is one of the best in handling COVID-19, the minister said.
Indonesia's economic growth is inversely proportional tothe COVID-19 case count. In the second quarter, when the number of COVID-19cases were below 100,000, economic growth jumped to 7.07 percent. However, whenthe Delta variant prevailed, COVID-19 cases jumped by 573,000 and economicgrowth was estimated to decline to around 3.5 to 4 percent.
In this fourth quarter, the Indonesian economy isexpected to grow some 5 percent, as several indicators have improvedconsiderably and COVID-19 cases have been sloping, he noted.
Hartarto added that the government's policy on enforcingpeople's activity restrictions (PPKM), increased testing and tracing, andaccelerating vaccinations have succeeded in cutting the number of activeCOVID-19 cases by 94.59 percent, from the peak on July 24, and by 53.81 percentin the last two weeks.
The World Bank has lauded the speed of implementingvaccination in Indonesia that has reached more than 100 million doses. Throughthis achievement, Indonesia is ranked fifth in the world in terms of the numberof injections of the first dose and stood sixth globally for the total numberof COVID-19 vaccination jabs./.