A government official from Bali has announced plans to reopen the island for visitors as soon as July.
I Gusti Agung Ngurah Rai Suryawijaya, spoke to ABC and said that Bali is doing better than the rest of Indonesia in terms of COVID-19 cases.
As of Wednesday [20 May] Bali has 363 reported cases of coronavirus, 267 recoveries and 4 deaths.
He said: ‘We are currently planning and preparing for Bali to reopen. Hopefully with the flattening curve and a decrease in cases, Bali will reopen in July, faster than other regions in Indonesia.
‘Most of the cases in Bali have been imported, those who returned to Bali, mostly workers who worked on cruise ships around the world.’
Those returning to the island have been quarantined in designated hotels for 12 days. These people have not had to front the cost of the hotel themselves as this onus has been taken up by government.
Testing has proven to be a major problem in Indonesia. With a population of 267-million across 6,000 islands, only 40,000 people have been tested, according to Science Mag.
In a statement, Panji Hadisoemarto, an epidemiologist at the University of Padjajaran in Bandung said: ‘So far, Indonesia has tested fewer than 40,000 people. Wide-scale testing may come too late for cities with a major outbreak, but if combined with isolation of patients and quarantining of their contacts, it could still help contain the virus in places where it has just arrived.’
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