Faisal Basri: Budi Gunadi Sadikin Is A Person Who Wants To Learn

Indef's senior economist, Faisal Basri. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Senior Economist of the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) Faisal Basri sees a little new hope for the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country with the inauguration of Budi Gunadi Sadikin as Minister of Health (Menkes) in the cabinet of the Advanced Indonesia cabinet.

Faisal said that the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic would be better in the future with Budi Gunadi at the helm of the health ministry. Moreover, he said, Budi was someone who was willing to learn.

"There is a glimmer of hope that the handling of COVID-19 will be more thorough with Pak Budi Gunadi Sadikin becoming the minister of health. This has no precedent but it provides a glimmer of hope. He knows what he has to do based on science and data. Because he is not only a professional, but he is alert with want to learn and so on, "he said, in a virtual discussion, Wednesday, December 23.

Moreover, said Faisal, if Budi Gunadi Sadikin was accompanied by experts in his field, it was believed that the way to deal with COVID-19 would become clearer.

"So, with the help of qualified experts, God willing, we have a clearer path to overcome this virus," he said.

Faisal also highlighted the number of active cases of COVID-19 which continues to increase. In fact, he said, Indonesia had not yet reached the cusp of wave one. He also thinks that handling of a pandemic must be taken seriously, because the impact will be very long.

"So the effect is not only this year and next year, but it is estimated that the effect will be until 2023-2024 at the longest. The problem is that other countries are starting to rise, but in us, the virus is incessantly entering the country and has reached 99.2 percent of districts. / city, there has not been any reduction in total cases or total deaths, "he said.

According to Faisal, currently Indonesia is in a crisis phase. This is marked by the increase in daily cases surpassing patients who recover from handling COVID-19.

"So we are now entering the critical phase aimed at the number of daily cases that exceed the number of patients who have recovered. Due to the limited capacity of our facilities, as a result the number of people who have died has increased to an average of 200 thousand in the last three days," he said.

Not only that, Faisal also said, the capacity of the Indonesian care system would collapse before the vaccine could actually be distributed.

"Once again, I will say that our health care system capacity has the potential to collapse before the vaccine arrives. The vaccine is not yet clear," he said.

Faisal hopes that as Minister of Health Budi Gunadi will be more aggressive in conducting testing and tracing. Thus COVID-19 can be controlled and community activities outside the home have occurred and the economy is able to move.

As is known, President Joko Widodo officially installed Budi Gunadi Sadikin who was appointed as a candidate for Minister of Health to replace Terawan Agus Putranto at the Presidential Palace, Wednesday, December 23.