The Indonesian government has asked its citizens not to travel during the Christmas and New Year holidays amid COVID-19 fear.
"Especially people from the red zones are not recommended to travel to other areas because of the high potential to transmit COVID-19," Wiku Adisasmito, spokesman for the Indonesian COVID-19 Task Force, told a virtual press conference on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the government has urged people who have to travel amid the pandemic to enforce health protocols and cancel trips if they are sick.
Currently, the occupancy rate of isolation rooms and ICUs (intensive care units) of hospitals in several areas had exceeded 70 percent, as the number of daily COVID-19 cases continued to rise, Adisasmito said.
The average active cases in December were 14.39 percent of the total COVID-19 cases, up from last month's 13.78 percent.
The government is drafting a policy regarding travel regulations for the 2021 Christmas and New Year holidays.
As of Thursday, there were 643,508 cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia, with 526,979 recovered and 19,390 dead.
