COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia

On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan, Hubei, China, which was reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.

[44] Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sent a letter to President Jokowi on 10 March 2020, urging countries with large populations, like Indonesia, to focus on increasing capacity of laboratoriums to detect cases of infection.

WHO gave advices, such as improving the mechanism of emergency responses, including asking for Indonesia to declare a national emergency situation as soon as possible, educating people and actively communicating while applying the appropriate risk communication measures, involving the local communities more, intensifying COVID-19 tracings, performing lab decentralization so that quick response teams can quickly map spread and clusters, and sharing detailed data on measures of the government in supervision and examination, including identification of patient contacts and summary of tracing patient contacts.

[50] Starting on 8 March, travel restrictions expanded to include Daegu and Gyeongsangbuk-do in South Korea, Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna regions of Italy, and Tehran and Qom in Iran.

[52] The Ministry of Health ordered the installation of thermal scanners for at least 135 airport gates and port docks,[53][54] and announced that provisioning over 100 hospitals with isolation rooms (to WHO-recommended standards) would begin.

[58] The Indonesian government announced on 4 March that it planned to turn a site on Galang Island, previously used as a refugee camp for Vietnamese asylum seekers into a 1,000-bed medical facility specially equipped to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and other infectious diseases.

[68][69] Ministry of Foreign Affairs also expanded the travel restrictions to temporary abolish visa free entry to Indonesia for one month and deny transit or arrival for visitors who have been in Iran, Italy, Vatican City, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and United Kingdom within the past 14 days.

Bus routes connecting Jakarta and other cities and provinces will remain open following the cancellation of a plan to temporarily suspend operations of Greater Jakarta-based intercity and interprovincial (AKAP) buses.

Prof. Mahfud MD as Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs said the national disaster could not be used as a justification for claiming force majeure and thereby evading obligations under contracts.

To reduce the impact of COVID-19 pandemic to the national economy, on 25 February, the government released an IDR 10.3 trillion stimulus policy to the tourism sector, in the form of ticket price discounts and restaurant tax deductions.

The IDR 10.3 trillion budget is given to provide discounted airplane ticket prices for 10 tourist destinations, such as Batam, Denpasar, Yogyakarta, Labuan Bajo, Lombok, Malang, Manado, Lake Toba (Silangit Airport), Tanjung Pandan, and Tanjungpinang, which applies from March to May 2020.

[112] World Bank projected that Indonesia's debt ratio will rise by 37%, influenced by the widening of state budget deficit, retardation of economic growth, and weakening of the rupiah.

COVID-19 Response Acceleration Task Force speaker Yurianto considered that the public would focus on the word "normal" which can be taken to mean "perform activities like usual without paying attention to health protocols".

[147][148] On 13 March, after 69 positive COVID-19 cases, several tourist destinations in Jakarta including Ancol Dreamland, multiple government-managed museums, Ragunan Zoo and Monas were closed for 2 weeks.

[154] On 16 March, MRT Jakarta, LRT and TransJakarta started to reduce number of trips, corridors and timetables (06.00 – 18.00), however, this policy was retracted due to long queue in many bus stops and train stations in morning.

Booths will only serve direct sales 3 hours before departure, there are capacity limitations in every train carriage, and it is advised to book tickets online via KAI Access or other external channels.

[220] Mayapada Group founder Dato Sri Tahir donated IDR 52 billion in form of personal protective equipment, medical drugs, disinfectant, operational vehicles and also accommodation.

[225] In April, Ita Fatia Nadia, a historian, established Solidaritas Pangan Jogja, a charity group who focused on distributing health supplies and food to low income informal workers in Yogyakarta.

[227][228] Indonesians who returned from China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, United Kingdom, Vatican City, France, Spain, Germany, and Switzerland were subject to additional health screening and a 14-day stay-at-home notice or quarantine depending on appearing symptoms.

[230][231] From 24 April until 8 June, the government suspended all passenger to travel outside areas with at least one confirmed case, regions that had imposed large-scale social restrictions (PSBB/LSSR), and those that had been declared COVID-19 red zones.

[97] Due to its number spike, a total of 59 countries banned non-essential travel to and from Indonesia, among them included Malaysia, Hungary, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and the US as declared by the CDC.

Jokowi insisted on not sharing travel history details of the patients that tested positive with coronavirus in an attempt to reduce panic and uneasiness in the general public.

[249] President Jokowi came under increased pressure in the course of March to impose a partial lockdown on virus-plagued areas, with scientists saying the country is racing against time to curb the spread of COVID-19 before Eid al-Fitr and that a community quarantine could be the only solution to do exactly that.

[254] Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health professor of epidemiology Marc Lipsitch "analysed air traffic out of the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak in China and suggested in a report ... that Indonesia might have missed cases" of COVID-19.

[255] Western diplomats[256][257] as well as local[254][258] and international[259][260] news outlets postulated that the lack of cases within Indonesia result from inadequate testing and under reporting, as opposed to sheer luck and divine intervention.

This caused scientists to raise concern that this evasion would lead to the diseases which can spread easily from Jakarta and nearby satellite cities, where it is the epicenter of the pandemic, to other regions of Indonesia with weak medical facilities which were arguably unable to handle large numbers of outbreak.

[286] There were also a few attempts to evade the travel restrictions which were discovered by the police department, such as one of the cargo trucks which was stopped, in which an intermodal container was hiding a car with passengers inside, to be transported from Java to Sumatra.

[288] Besides, messages from influencers to stay home are deemed ineffective because not all people can economically do it, especially from the lower class, informal workers, and day laborers who must work outside the house to fulfill their basic needs.

The city's Capital Investment and One-Stop Service (PM-PTSP) announced that it plans to postpone any public events with mass-gatherings from March to April following the news of an increasing number of COVID-19 cases to 27.

Several films, such as Tersanjung the Movie, Generasi 90an: Melankolia [id], and KKN di Desa Penari have been delayed, also because of the pandemic; the latter has been postponed for the second time due to the Omicron variant.