Bank Mandiri Economists Give Bad News: New COVID-19 Cases Are Predicted To Drop In The Next 3 Months

JAKARTA - PT Bank Mandiri Tbk's Chief Economist, Andry Asmoro, said the wave of increasing daily cases of COVID-19 that is still occurring today is believed to require a long recovery time. According to Andry, this assumption is based on the post-new year situation, which was also marked by an increase in daily cases.

"Based on the experience of increasing COVID-19 cases in January 2021, it will take about 3 months to reduce COVID-19 cases to a normal level of 5,000-6,000 cases per day", he said in an official statement, Thursday, July 8.

Andry added that his party noted that community mobility was currently still relatively high amid the Implementation of Emergency Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM).

"Although mobility is still high, the movement of people has started to decline since mid-June", he said.

He mentioned that referring to Google Mobility Index data, it is known that until July 2, 2021, 5 days lagging until today, a much higher movement is seen in shopping centers (retails and groceries).

Then for air transport mobility, FlightRadar data until July 5 shows that flight frequency has also started to decline since early July 2021, which is reflected in the frequency of flights to major cities in Indonesia, namely Surabaya, Medan, Makassar, and Denpasar, which has decreased.

Then, the mobility of domestic air transport goods in May 2021 was recorded to have decreased by minus 21.5 percent compared to the previous month (month-to-month/MoM) to 195,000 tons.

This was followed by the mobility of sea freight goods which also fell to 24.8 million tons or minus 4.8 percent in May 2021 compared to April 2021.

Meanwhile, the number of rail transport goods in May 2021 was recorded to have increased by 1.7 percent mom, or to 4.3 million tons.

"In general, people's mobility is likely to decrease along with the implementation of Emergency PPKM on July 3-20 2021. Moreover, the implementation of Emergency PPKM is likely to be extended if there is no significant decrease in daily positive cases of COVID-19", concluded Andry.