Indonesian President Joko Widodo (ANTARA NEWS)
Jakarta (UNA-OIC) – Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) is articulating a new-fangled strategy for campaign to propagate health protocols to stop the transmission of COVID-19, including by conducting bi-weekly awareness drives and involving Family Welfare Movement members.
“I want that our focus remains unwavering on health protocols and changing the people’s outlook. I want focused (approaches). For instance, we focus on campaigning for the use of masks in two weeks and then in the next two weeks, we campaign on maintaining a safe distance or washing hands,” Jokowi noted at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta, Monday.
He made the statement at a limited meeting entitled “COVID-19 Handling and National Economic Recovery,” with attendees comprising ministers of the Onward Indonesia Cabinet.
“I think it is important to not collectively campaign for hand-washing, maintaining distance, avoiding crowds, and wearing masks. If we do them together, I think the upper middle class citizens can quickly comprehend it, but it needs to be done one-by-one for the lower-class communities,” Jokowi remarked.
“I would like to involve the Family Welfare Movement (members). If the ladies are concerned about COVID-19, maybe we can put the brakes on the idea, but if they are ready, I think the movement can be very effective, with a door-to-door approach to propagate the use of masks,” he stated.
President Jokowi called to conduct massive campaigning through the mediums of journalistic mass media and social media.
“This shift in mindset should be done quickly through communication, maybe on TV and on social media, on a massive scale in the next two weeks through various approaches.”
The Indonesian leader revealed that in the last few weeks, people had expressed concern over the spread of COVID-19 in the country.
“I am not sure if it is due to the increasing number of cases, or especially for the upper middle class communities, which have witnessed an increase in the number of health protocols rather than a decrease,” he stated, pointing out that this especially holds relevance when one takes into account Indonesia’s COVID-19 death rate that is higher than the global figure.
“We know that up until yesterday, over 111,000 cases were reported, with a fatality rate of 4.7 percent and the number of deaths in Indonesia being over 0.8 percent from the global mortality rate. I think this is what we need to work on,” Jokowi affirmed.
Up until Sunday (August 2), the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Indonesia had reached 111,455, with 68,975 recoveries and 5,236 deaths. Meanwhile, the number of suspected patients reached 62,366, with the total number of specimens tested reaching 1,537,413.
COVID-19 has spread to all 34 provinces in Indonesia, with the highest number of cases in East Java, reaching 22,504, followed by 22,144 in DKI Jakarta and 9,732 cases in Central Java.
AB/UNA-OIC
