Indonesia lifting all COVID curbs nationwide

Almost three years after officials announced the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Indonesia, the country’s leader said Friday they were lifting all coronavirus-related restrictions nationwide. President Joko Widodo said Indonesia’s COVID-19 situation was under control after observing improvements over the past 10 months, allowing the country to abandon the large-scale social restrictions on crowds and people's movements it had adopted in April 2020.

During the pandemic, instead of implementing a nationwide lockdown, his administration applied two systems: PSBB, which refers to large-scale social restrictions, and then PPKM, a tiered system to curb public mobility.Both policies were critical in the government’s pandemic response.A study found that almost all Indonesians have developed antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.