In Indonesia, as of Tuesday 1st September 2020, there were 42,009 cases of people still sick with COVID-19, or 23.7 percent of those who have been diagnosed, while the world average stands at 26.6 percent.
However, Indonesia is still recognised as struggling with it’s response to the pandemic in terms of testing and infection rates.
In Beijing, 83,644 cases of infections have been found after testing 90 million citizens. Meanwhile, Indonesia has only tested 697,043 people with 1.2 million specimens and has found 84,882 confirmed positive cases, according to data from the Indonesian Ministry of Health.
Indonesia has only conducted 4,389 tests per one million of its population. Meanwhile, China has conducted 62,814 tests per one million population.
Apart from infection cases, Indonesia also reported 111 people had died from COVID-19 on Wednesday 2nd September. The total number of people who have died because of COVID-19 in Indonesia stands at 7,016 cases. Meanwhile, since the pandemic began at the end of 2019, 4,634 have died due to the coronavirus in China.
Economist Faisal Basri explained that Indonesia needs to learn from Finland, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, which have prioritised public safety and health over the economy. Even though these countries have entered the brink of recession this year, foreign tourists trust in the handling of COVID-19 so that they can still generate foreign exchange.
“Indonesia may not be included, it is still on the blacklist because of its reputation for being the world’s fourth country handling, it’s the virus poorly.
Unconsciously, we are being punished by the world,” said Faisal at a hearing meeting (RDP) with Commission VI of the House of Representatives (DPR).
Faisal estimates that Indonesia’s economic growth in the third quarter of 2020 will be -3 percent. This means that Indonesia may be in a recession when the official statistics are released for the third quarter. Indonesia’s economic growth in the first quarter of this year reached 2.97 percent. In the second quarter of 2020, economic growth contracted by minus 5.32 percent.
Meanwhile, the government projects that economic growth in the third quarter of 2020 will be in the range of 0 percent to -2 percent. Therefore, the projection of economic growth until the end of 2020 is expected to show annual growth of 0.2 percent to -1.1 percent.
Source: Legal Era Indonesia