Holiday Ayo - Indonesian citizens are asked to continue traveling within the country and to stick with domestic tourism. This is a request from Indonesia’s Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, Sandiaga Uno, in regard to the detection of Covid-19 sub-variant XBB in Indonesia. The people are urged to stay in the country and not to travel abroad, except for emergencies and really important matters.

“After being detected all over Singapore, we got news from Health Ministry that that new variant has been detected in Indonesia. That is why let us raise our caution and not traveling to another country if it’s not very, very urgent,” he says during online Weekly Press Briefing on Monday, as cited from Kompas.com.

Even so, Sandiaga also asks the citizens not to worry too much about it. The most important thing is for them to continue following the health protocols. Meanwhile, the government keeps s trying to expand the distribution of booster vaccine or the third-dose vaccine.

source: kompas.com

“The citizens have to be careful, but they don’t need to worry about the spread of the new variant XBB and of course, we have to do supervision and monitoring in the recovery, especially during our preparation in celebrating the event of G20,” he says.

In the middle of Covid-19 pandemic that have slowly lowered in intensity in the past months in Indonesia, now it is reported that a new sub-variant of Covid-19 called Omicron XBB has entered the country. This sub-variant causes the rise of infected patients in 24 countries.

source: kompas.com

In the neighboring country, Singapore, the number of patients infected with Covid-19 sub-variant Omicron XBB has reached 6000 per day. The first case of XBB in Indonesia was detected in a 29 year old woman that had just come back from Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara.

“There are symptoms like cough, cold, and fever. She then did a check-up and was revealed to be positive on September 26th. After going on isolation, the patient had been declared cured on October 3rd,” explains the Health Ministry’s spokesperson, Mohammad Syahril, on Saturday.

Although XBB variant is more contagious, the treatment is not more difficult than other variants. Even so, this country is still not safe from the threat of the Corona virus. Syahril asks the citizens to keep following the health protocols, such as wearing masks in public, avoiding crowds, cleaning your hands, and taking a test if you feel the symptoms.