Indonesia has temporarily banned domestic road, air and sea travel starting Friday to prevent the spread of coronavirus, as millions of Muslims mark the start of the holy month of Ramadan.
What's going on? Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, and tens of millions of people make their way home to celebrate the end of Ramadan each year with families and loved ones, an annual tradition called mudik.
But the country is grappling with rapidly rising numbers of coronavirus infections and there are concerns that the mass migration home for Idul Fitri -- the Indonesian name for Eid al-Fitr, the celebration that marks the end of the month-long Ramadan fast -- will spark further Covid-19 outbreaks.
How bad is the outbreak in Indonesia? In the early stages of the pandemic, Indonesia was a regional outlier, not reporting any Covid-19 cases until early March. Now, the country has the second-worst outbreak in Southeast Asia, behind Singapore.
Indonesia has recorded 8,211 coronavirus cases and 689 people have died, according to government figures. Indonesian President Joko Widodo declared a national public health emergency on March 31 but has not issued a nationwide lockdown.
What is Indonesia doing? To try to prevent the disease spreading further, all holiday travel in the country has been banned, with public transport between major cities suspended from Friday until May 31. Tens of thousands of troops are being deployed at checkpoints to enforce the regulations.
Private vehicles and motorbikes have been banned from traveling in and out of the major cities that are Covid-19 hotspots, known as "red zones." In these places, stricter lockdown measures are in force to contain the virus. The Greater Jakarta area is one such zone, where coronavirus has spread rapidly in the past month.
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