Jakarta (ANTARA) - Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto confirmed that the implementation of community activity restrictions (PPKM) would continue until the government had completed conducting an evaluation.

"We will evaluate it in one to two days," he noted in Jakarta on Wednesday.

The minister made the statement after the result of a limited meeting regarding PPKM implementation led by President Joko Widodo (Jokowi).

"Later, it will be announced by the president himself," he remarked.

Earlier, President Jokowi said that a study by all coordinating ministers and the health minister regarding the likelihood to end PPKM would be completed by the end of December, and a decision would then be taken.

The study included a sero survey, which is a study to look at the total population in Indonesia that already had antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

"The results of the study are still in the third week of January," the minister remarked.

Hartarto also did not confirm whether PPKM would be stopped at the end of December 2022 or continued until 2023.

"We will just wait for the announcement," he stated.

Based on the report of the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, the pandemic in Indonesia has been under control, which is marked by community activities that can be carried out as usual as before the pandemic hit.

As of December 27, 2022, until 12:00 local time, an additional 803 positive cases were reported, thereby bringing the total case count to 6,717,395, while the number of active cases decreased, with the remaining number of cases at 16,575.

The recovery rate is also reported to have risen, with an increase of 1,692 people, thereby bringing the total number to 6,540,260. However, the number of deaths also increased by nine to reach 160,560.

The trend of confirmed cases of COVID-19 on a daily basis is said to have decreased drastically to below two thousand cases of COVID-19 per day.

However, Indonesia is still surrounded by high COVID-19 infections occurring in neighboring regions in Asia, such as China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia. Japan, for example, reported infection cases reaching around 1.1 million per week, while China also recorded at least 500 thousand cases every day.

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Translator: Desca Lidya N, Resinta S
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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