Indonesia has recommended its citizens to postpone travel overseas due to an increase in omicron cases

After a surge in instances of the omicron strain of COVID-19 were linked back to individuals travelling from outside, Indonesian officials encouraged the public to avoid travelling abroad on Monday.

According to the latest data from the Indonesian Ministry of Health, the number of omicron cases in the Southeast Asian country has reached 414, with the majority of the cases being Indonesian nationals who had received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccination.

Almost all of the recent cases were imported, with Saudi Arabian tourists topping the list, followed by those from Turkey, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates.

"If at all possible, please do not travel abroad for the next two to three weeks," Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Pandjaitan, who has been managing Indonesia's COVID-19 response, said during a weekly virtual press conference.
Let the tidal surge subside over there; there's no need to bring the sickness here."

Official numbers showed that the number of cases of the omicron type had tripled since late December, when it stood at 136.
On December 16, Indonesia announced their first omicron case.

Indonesian Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin noted that omicron looked to be more transmissible but less severe in the archipelago nation so far, and urged the populace to follow health and safety measures.

"We'll have to deal with the omicron variant's wave.
There's no need to fear since we've prepared carefully, and past experience has shown that while surges occur swiftly, this omicron wave also fades quickly," he noted.

On Monday, Indonesia reported 454 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of current cases in the country to over 6,300.
Despite an increase in infections, the current scenario was far from the country's peak outbreak in July, which was fueled by the delta strain and saw cases reach 50,000 per day.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the United States anticipated in December that daily cases in Indonesia caused by the omicron variety would reach more than 387,000 by April.

"Of course, it's a big, great likelihood (Indonesia) would attain that number, even more than that number, because of the capabilities of the omicron variant," Dicky Budiman, an epidemiologist at Australia's Griffith University, told Arab News recently.

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