COVID-19 Cases Are Crazy, Economists: The Government's Focus Is Dominant On The Economy

JAKARTA - COVID-19 cases in the country continue to experience a significant increase in new cases. The spike in cases is considered to have occurred because the government's focus was too dominant on economic factors rather than health.

Managing Director of Political Economy and Policy Studies (PEPS), Anthony Budiawan said the current condition of Indonesia was in a critical condition because the daily cases had reached almost 60 thousand and had become the highest in the world. Therefore, it is necessary to act quickly.

Anthony gave an example of India which experienced a spike from February 11 to May 8. However, within 7 weeks India was very successful in suppressing COVID-19 cases in its country. In fact, the positivity rate is at 5 percent. Meanwhile, Indonesia is at 10 percent.

"So if we look at this as a spike that causes problems for us. Because if the positivity rate is more than 5 percent, the transmission is much greater than what is indicated that there are new cases. we will find all the problems," he said in a virtual discussion, Friday, July 16.

Meanwhile, said Anthony, Indonesia has only started to soar from May 29 and until now. While reflecting on the case of India, Indonesia only reached its peak at the end of August.

"The key is how we can suppress like this because we are still climbing 26.4 percent, this is very large. When compared to India, the peak is only 22.7 percent positivity rate. Why is our positivity rate high? Because our policy was wrong from the start," he explained.

Anthony said that when the positivity rate was 8.49 percent and had not yet reached 5 percent, the government at that time relaxed large-scale social restrictions (PSBB). As a result, the positivity rate jumped again to 24 percent.

Then, the government suppressed the spread of cases by implementing PPKM, but before the positivity rate decreased, the policy was relaxed again and became 32 percent. After that, it decreased but was still above 10 percent and was relaxed again, where the positivity rate has now reached 26 percent again.

"Why is this happening? Because this is an economic factor that is too dominant and there could be demands from the PPKM community, the PSBB was opened because it was unable to contain the economy," he said.

Moreover, said Anthony, social networking was not strong. In 2020, the government will provide assistance of IDR 600,000 per head of family and will be given for four months.

"Because what if the community was not given assistance and the assistance was very meager Rp600 thousand per family for only 4 months and now the plan is Rp300 thousand per family for two months. So people cannot survive," he said.