September 5, 2024
JAKARTA – A national tourism group says the latest global outbreak of mpox has not prompted foreign travelers to cancel their plans to visit Indonesia, at least for now.
Paul Edmundus, cofounder of the Indonesia Inbound Tour Operators Association (IINTOA), said on Monday that he could not say for sure whether operators were aware of the current outbreak.
“But what’s certain is that up until today, no one has canceled their travel [plans] to Indonesia,” Paul told a weekly press briefing of the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry.
Speaking before him, the Health Ministry’s Surveillance and Quarantine Director Achmad Farchanny Tri Adriyanto said one individual infected with mpox had arrived in the country in 2022. In subsequent years, the ministry had recorded a tally of 73 cases in 2023 and 14 new cases to date in 2024.
“The latest case we detected this year was in May,” said Achmad, adding that all suspected cases reported afterward were checked and returned negative test results.
The tourism ministry’s lead expert Nia Niscaya said the news was “somewhat relieving, but we must not be complacent”.
Continuing, Achmad said the government had implemented surveillance measures by installing thermal scanners at all international airports and seaports, as well as visual monitoring. Starting on Saturday, the Health Ministry had mandated all inbound travelers to complete the SatuSehat self-declaration form online prior to departing for Indonesia.
Read also: Indonesia tightens mpox surveillance following three new suspected cases in Jakarta
The recent spread of the clade Ib strain across West and Central Africa prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare mpox a public health emergency of international concern in mid-August.
According to Achmad, the outbreak in Africa showed mpox was spreading particularly rapidly in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.
IINTOA’s Paul said his company had accommodated a Congolese tourist with no undue issues, noting that “tourists are not aware” of the measures the government had imposed to prevent the disease’s spread.
For example, only one travel operator affiliated with his company had asked about the mpox curbs, he said, while no travelers had asked about the measures.
Read also: Experts urge better mpox communication to improve detection, treatment
The monkeypox virus, which causes the disease mpox, was first detected in 1958 in a laboratory monkey in Denmark, and the first reported mpox case in a human was detected in 1970 in an infant in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to the WHO’s Mpox webpage.
While the disease is endemic in West and Central Africa, the last mpox outbreak emerged in 2022 with the first reported case in London, and then spread to Europe and North America until its global health emergency status was lifted in May 2023.
In November 2022, the WHO renamed the disease from monkeypox to mpox to distance it from “racist and stigmatizing language”.
The virus spreads primarily through close contact with an infected individual. This includes sexual contact as well as face-to-face contact, defined as “talking or breathing” close to each other, “which can generate droplets or short-range aerosols”.
Some studies have found that the virus can persist for some time on clothing, objects and surfaces touched by an infected individual.
Typical symptoms include a flu-like illness followed by a skin rash or lesions. An individual is deemed infectious until after all lesions have crusted over, the scabs have fallen off and a new layer of skin has formed. This process usually takes two to four weeks.