Indonesia eases COVID-19 restrictions in Bali to tighten borders

JAKARTA, Sept 13 (Reuters) – Indonesia has eased its COVID-19 restrictions on the popular tourist island of Bali, although international travelers will face stricter protocols on arrival to help curb the spread of new variants, a senior minister said on Monday.

Tourist sites in most areas of the island will accept visitors, Maritime and Investment Minister Luhut Panjaitan said at a virtual conference, as long as they adhere to strict protocols, such as demonstrating their status. vaccination in a government-verified telephone application.

“The rapidly improving situation of COVID-19 in Java and Bali has caused the PPKM level to decline more rapidly than we expected,” Panjaitan told the conference, referring to Indonesia’s system of social mobility restrictions.

The level of social mobility restrictions in Bali will be assessed on a weekly basis.

International visitors, however, must spend forty-eight days and do three PCR tests before entering the island.

“Firm action” would be taken against those rejecting the restrictions, Panjaitan said, but did not say what those sanctions would include.

Later at the conference, Indonesia’s Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the borders with the country would be narrowed.

“The government has decided to strengthen the country’s entry points by equipping and tightening the quarantine process in the sea, land and air,” Sadikin said, adding that Indonesia would strengthen the use of genome sequencing to quickly identify new ones. coronavirus variants.

Bali’s plans to reopen foreign tourists earlier this year were rejected when the country was overwhelmed by a devastating second wave driven by the highly infectious variant of the Delta, first identified in India.

Indonesia has suffered one of the worst outbreaks of coronavirus in all of Asia, with more than 4 million cases and 138,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

After reaching a high of more than 56,000 cases on July 15, the number of COVID-19 cases reported daily has dropped significantly last month. The country registered less than 3,000 cases on Monday.

Report by Agustinus Beo Da Costa; Written by Fathin Ungku; Edited by Hugh Lawson and Alex Richardson

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