Jakarta, Jul 1(UNI): Indonesia on Thursday announced a lockdown on its main island Java, as well as the tourism destination of Bali due to a surge in COVID cases.
This was announced by President Joko Widodo as Indonesia in recent days recorded two million Covid cases, which is being attributed to increased holiday travel and the Delta variant.
The authorities said that the lockdown will be in place for two weeks and they hope to bring down the number of cases to below 10,000 a day.
The country is currently recording more than 20,000 new cases each day.
However, health experts have said that the number of cases across the country are potentially much higher, largely because of severely inadequate testing outside the capital Jakarta.
Under the new rules, all staff working for non-essential businesses will have to work from home, and distance learning will be implemented across schools.
Malls, places of worship and public leisure facilities like parks will also be shut, with dining-in banned.
Businesses including those in the health, security and energy industries have been deemed critical and will be allowed to run at 100% capacity, which means all employees can go to work. Others like financial services, which have been deemed essential, can run at 50% capacity.
