"The ministry is evaluating the health protocols even though Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said healthy people are allowed to take off their masks in a closed room," the ministry's head of communication and public service bureau, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, stated in Jakarta, Tuesday.
Tarmizi emphasized the need to follow health protocols in public places to ensure the health of individuals interacting with one another. Those who are ill or symptomatic still need to comply with the applied health protocols.
"However, in order to revoke the health protocols regulation, we need to make sure the condition first, especially ahead of the 2023 Eid al-Fitr homecoming. We must prevent a spike in cases," she noted.
Tarmizi remarked that the surge in COVID-19 cases was not triggered by homecoming activities but rather by new variants that had surfaced in Indonesia and several other countries.
In 2021, the number of COVID-19 cases increased due to the Alpha variant, followed by the Delta variant and the Omicron variant due to which almost 60 thousand daily cases had been recorded. Two big waves that occurred in other countries were caused by the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants around July to August as well as the BQ.1 and XBB variants, she pointed out.
Meanwhile, an epidemiologist from the Faculty of Public Health, University of Indonesia (FKM UI) Iwan Ariawan still recommends the provision of health protocols by wearing masks in public places, although currently, there are no binding sanctions against those not using them.
"Masks are still recommended. Those, who are comfortable wearing masks, can continue to wear them because masks are useful for preventing influenza, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases," he remarked.
In addition, Ariawan recommends health workers and the public accessing healthcare facilities to continue to wear masks.
"In health facilities, people still need to wear a mask because there are threats of various other diseases," he stated.
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Translator: Andi Firdaus, Resinta S
Editor: Sri Haryati
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