Jakarta. Communications and Informatics Minister Johnny G. Plate announced over the weekend that Indonesia is among the five countries with the largest decline in Covid-19 cases, and has managed to keep up the trend for a long period of time. This should be a motivation to continue following the health protocols, especially when the year-end holiday season is approaching.

"Indonesia has successfully become among the five countries that have significantly lowered their cases and managed to maintain [this progress] for a long period of time. Together with four other countries, namely India, the Philippines, Iran, Japan," Johnny said on Saturday.

Indonesia has brought down the Covid-19 cases by 99.3 percent from its peak and has maintained this trend for 130 days. Indonesia currently has 2,564 cases, far less than the lowest point during the pre-surge levels which stood at 26,126 cases.

"The World Health Organization has also named Indonesia as a green country with a low transmission rate of less than 2 percent," Johnny said.

According to the minister, this impressive achievement is the fruit of everyone’s team work.

"All of the efforts done by each and every individual —no matter how small it is— contributes to this decline. As activities reopen, we must continue to ramp up the collective awareness and community self-control efforts in dealing with the pandemic,” Johnny said. 

The achievement also proves that Indonesia has implemented the right policies to combat the pandemic, namely the community-level restriction (PPKM), the 3Ts (testing, tracing, treatment), enhancement of the vaccination drive, as well as disciplined health protocols.

“We shall consider this achievement as a motivation, but we must not lower our guard, especially as we are about to enter the New Year and Christmas holidays that can potentially increase people's mobility. The lack of stringent health protocols can pose risk of a surge in cases,” Johnny said.

The government has rolled out several regulations to keep people’s mobility under control during the holiday season. For instance, the removal of collective leave. The government has also issued a ban on taking a leave in the Christmas and New Year period.

“But public support is necessary for these policies to have optimum effect. Let us all protect Indonesia by being disciplined in following the health protocols and the year-end regulations so we will not face a third wave like in Europe,” Johnny said.