Jakarta. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo instructed local governments on Monday to prioritize “mini-lockdowns” in their efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus without having to close the entire district or city.

He described mini-lockdowns as restriction measures applied at the smallest unit of community administrations such as sub-districts or even neighborhood complexes.

“Repeat mini lockdowns will be more effective [in curbing transmissions]. We should not shut the entire district, city or even province as such a move will do harm to many people,” the president told members of the Covid-19 Handling and National Economic Recovery Committee during a video conference.

The localized lockdowns are up to local governments to decide, he said.

Contrary to the president’s remarks, Jakarta has re-imposed partial lockdown across the entire province since two weeks ago after newly confirmed cases of the virus began to surge by more than 1,000 cases per day. Shopping malls are still allowed to operate, provided they limit the number of visitors to 50 percent of capacity. 

Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan said the decision was approved by the president.

Localized lockdowns are also imposed by Jakarta’s satellite cities such as Bekasi, Depok, Bogor and Tangerang but people movement is relatively free.

Jokowi also emphasized on attempts to reduce the number of Covid-19 deaths, noting that the fatality rate in Indonesia remains slightly higher than the global average.

The fatality rate in proportion to the total cases has been reduced to 3.8 percent as of Sunday from 4.3 percent in August. 

“However, we are still above the global fatality rate of 3.01 percent. We must work together to lower the number,” he said.

Jokowi said the committee should come up with a clear plan of mass vaccination within the next two weeks.

The plan should explain in details when the vaccination will be conducted, which group of the community will become the first to receive the vaccine and who will arrange the mass vaccination, he said.

“Everything must be carefully planned so that we can implement mass vaccination smoothly once the vaccine is available,” he said.

Indonesia has recorded a total of 278,772 coronavirus cases, including 10,473 deaths, as of Monday.