2022 Many Important Agendas, Jokowi Asks Staff To Press COVID-19 Cases During Christmas and New Year

JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi), asked his staff to suppress the rate of addition of COVID-19 cases during the Christmas and New Year celebrations in 2022. This request arises because Indonesia will host the G20.

"The President's directive is to ensure that it does not arrive at Naru (Christmas and New Year) when the next wave of surges occurs", said Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin in a press conference broadcast via the Presidential Secretariat's YouTube, Monday, October 25.

"Many important events next year, such as the G20, are very dependent on the trust of world leaders in how Indonesia can handle the conditions in Nataru. Because if there is a spike, it will greatly disrupt their attendance and the success of the event", added the former Deputy Minister of SOEs.

To make the request a success, Budi said that his party continues to anticipate, namely by carrying out testing, tracing, and treatment (3T) as well as carrying out COVID-19 vaccinations.

Regarding tracking, he said, this must be done for people who have close contact. "The second thing is that vaccines must be accelerated, especially for the elderly", said Budi.

Vaccination for the elderly is deemed necessary because they belong to a vulnerable group. Moreover, most cases of death after exposure to COVID-19 came from the elderly.

"These elderly people are at high risk of being hospitalized and dying if the next spike occurs, which we hope will not happen", he said.

In addition to these two steps, the government also continues to anticipate and monitor the development of the virus in the world, including in the UK, which currently has the AY.42 variant.

Finally, the government is also trying to reduce the rate of domestic COVID-19 cases. Moreover, currently, there are 105 cities/regencies in 34 provinces that are now experiencing additional cases, although not significantly.

"Indeed, the numbers are not worrying and are in the safe benchmark of the WHO standard. But we try to anticipate early so that excessive euphoria does not make us careless, not alert, and the increase in 105 cities/districts becomes uncontrollable", concluded Budi.