Emergency PPKM Not Strict Enough to Limit People's Mobility, Epidemiologist Says

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - An epidemiologist from Griffith University, Dicky Budiman, opined that there are still many gaps in the implementation of the emergency state of public activity restrictions or Emergency PPKM in Java and Bali.

Dicky argued the new measure did not provide a strict rule that limits people's mobility. “There is no lockdown in this Emergency PPKM. No rules that make people stay still. No rules to stop mobility and interaction,” said Dicky when contacted on Thursday, July 1, 2021.

Besides, the government did not pay much attention to strategies in improving the situations in health facilities that are getting worse. In fact, the existence of this new policy should be able to provide time slack and prevent many cases that cannot be handled in the future.

“So it will, directly and indirectly, curb the death rate and virus transmission. So the number of cases will also decrease. It (the new policy) should be stricter than this (lockdown),” Dicky said.

He understood that the government considered the Java-Bali Emergency PPKM to be the best Covid-19 restriction policy to be enforced at this time. However, Dicky opined that this policy was still not ideal. Moreover, the implementation was considered to be too long, from July 3 to July 20, 2021.

“In my opinion, it should not be applied for a long time, but a week. Because once again this is already a critical situation, so we shouldn't monitor this situation for too long,” the epidemiologist said.

Read: Covid-19 Kappa Variant; Jakparta Deputy Gov Tells People to Stay at Home

EGI ADYATAMA