Anticipating The New Variant Of COVID-19, Erick Thohir Prepares BUMN To Provide Medicines To Hospitals

JAKARTA - Minister of State-Owned Enterprises Erick Thohir said state-owned companies in the health and pharmaceutical sectors will take anticipatory steps if Indonesia is faced with a new variant of COVID-19.

The move was prepared following the announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) that a new variant might appear with a faster transmission rate.

"I think it was as stated by the Minister of Health, if we are the Ministry of SOEs as the support for many ministries. We will of course follow the directions from other ministries, we will see what the preparations are," he said, in Jakarta, Monday, July 19.

As for the readiness that Erick meant in the form of medicines, acceleration of vaccine production, to the availability of hospitals (RS).

"We (the availability of) the problem of drugs, vaccines, or the availability of hospitals. We are part of the ecosystem that ensures integrated health services," he said.

Erick said that to ensure that things went well, especially the acceleration of national vaccination, state-owned companies must also be supported by many parties. He acknowledged that SOEs cannot stand alone in dealing with COVID-19.

"So what I emphasize is that it is impossible with this joint ecosystem development, we are BUMN that stand as our own ivory tower, it is impossible, especially with the mutual cooperation vaccine, we involve many private parties to be part of the injection so that this can be faster," he said. .