TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Wednesday asserted that the key towards economic recovery is by solving the underlying issue with the Covid-19 pandemic, which is the balance between the economy and public health. The economy will not be recovered if the pandemic cannot be contained.

“Everyone must be alert and not just speak about the economy, economy, and economy,” said the President in Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) event on June 30. “But don’t just view it from the health aspect and neglect the economic aspect. Both aspects must go side by side.”

Citing the latest data from the Indonesian Covid-19 task force, the number of cases this week has reached 125,396 which is higher than during the first Covid wave in January 2021 that logged 89,901 cases.

The task force said that this marks a second wave of coronavirus transmissions in Indonesia with a 381 percent or five-fold increase between the lowest number of cases and its peak within six weeks time.

Indonesia previously saw a 244 percent drop in cases for 15 consecutive weeks. The increase of Covid cases was seen one week after Eid holiday. Since the fourth week after the holiday period, the number of cases suddenly surged for three weeks until the fourth week of June.

President Jokowi blamed the Covid-19 surge to the high public mobility during the Eid holidays. “This is the effect of the Eid holidays and the new variant. Current active cases have jumped more than two fold to 228,000,” he said.

Read: Continuous Chaos in Indonesia's Covid-19 Mitigation

DEWI NURITA