The Central Government Urges Bali To Cut Back On Religious Ceremonies To Prevent Covid-19 Transmissions

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 The central government through the Maritime and Investment Coordinator Minister has urged Bali to cut back religious ceremonies during the partial lockdown.

The Maritime and Investment Coordinator Minister, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan stated that religious ceremonies that have been running in Bali could potentially create Covid-19 clusters and cause an increase of virus transmissions on the island. As a preventative measure, Luhut urged the community to postpone any ceremonies or at least reduce the capacity and duration to prevent causing a crowd during.

    “The ceremonies could take around 3 days, and it will potentially increase the risk of creating new clusters. Which would make the impact much worse than this.” Luhut said during his visit with the Buleleng regional government to inspect their Covid-19 handling on Thursday (12/8). Luhut also urged the Buleleng regional government to stop allowing asymptomatic Covid-19 patients to undergo self-quarantine at home, as one of the efforts to reduce Covid-19 transmissions that is still considered high with over 100 new cases on each day through family clusters.

 However, he admitted that all these policies were initiated as an effort from the government to overcome the pandemic before finally reopening the border for international visitors in the future. “We need to gain more trust from the world before we can reopen our borders for them. Because if they think that we’re unable to handle this pandemic properly, when will we start receiving tourists? So we have to temporarily live differently from our normal life to help things get better.” Luhut concluded.