Jokowi Calls Handling COVID-19 The Toughest Work Of His Government Period

JAKARTA - Indonesian President Joko Widodo revealed the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as the toughest job in his reign which has been going on since 2014.

The President conveyed this while attending the commemoration of a decade of sympathizers of the Presidential Jokowi Volunteers Front (Bara JP) in Bogor City, West Java, Sunday, where he said the government had been faced with a big question mark regarding how long the COVID-19 pandemic would end and must be resolved in what way.

"In almost 10 years we have worked, indeed the most difficult to deal with COVID-19. We really don't know when it will end, how strong it will be, and how strong it will be for how many months, I don't know," Jokowi said as quoted by Antara, Sunday.

According to Jokowi, the leaders of other major countries were also faced, considering that almost all countries at that time had no experience in tackling the pandemic.

Therefore, Jokowi is grateful that Indonesia had experienced panic because of the difficulty of getting masks at the beginning of the pandemic was able to get through the situation, including by injecting at least 452 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine into the community.

This figure, continued Jokowi, can be considered impossible by some when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

"This is our country, if we already have the will to work, it can be resolved," he said.

Jokowi added that the vaccination achievement was accompanied by findings of the results of the examination which showed that around 98 percent of Indonesia's population already had COVID-19 antibodies.

"Whether from the injection of the vaccine or maybe (having antibodies) because it is infected naturally," he said.

In addition to handling the spread of COVID-19, Jokowi reminded that Indonesia's economic resilience is facing the impact of the pandemic, including among the best among the G20 countries.

"Last year we grew 5.3 percent. Very high. The first quarter of this year grew 5.03 percent. Our inflation is also at 4 percent, meaning prices can be controlled," said Jokowi.

This control, called Jokowi, is enough to help ease the burden on the Indonesian people in terms of the economy due to COVID-19, not as heavy as faced by other countries.

Jokowi said that in Europe there are countries that have experienced a surge in energy prices of up to 700 percent.

"There is one European country whose prime minister has just come here, I don't say, it has increased by 700 percent. Seven times. We have increased by 10-20 percent, in 2015 we have increased by 30 percent, the demonstration has not been completed, imagine 700 percent," he said.

Therefore, Jokowi emphasized that there are many things that should be grateful for from Indonesia's conditions in an effort to deal with and get through the COVID-19 pandemic situation.