Plans to reopen Bali to foreign tourists from September have been postponed indefinitely. While trying to encourage domestic tourism industries, some Southeast Asian countries have been considering ‘travel bubbles’ with other countries as a way to get businesses restarted. But, unfortunately, the second wave the countries in Asia has prompted fresh lockdowns.
Epidemiologists and public health experts believe that the arrival of tourists in Bali not only made infection from other parts of Indonesia more likely but underscored the country’s shortcomings in tackling the pandemic, namely a lack of testing and contract tracing.
More importantly, health experts in Indonesia say that another likely contributing factor was the arrival of the more infectious mutation of the virus, known as D614G.
Indonesia’s Bali initially appeared to weather the health crisis better than other parts of Indonesia, which has suffered Southeast Asia’s biggest death toll by far. But coronavirus cases have spiked after it reopened its borders to domestic tourism at the end of July.
