Indonesia's COVID-19 emergency: where the local is central

In: Contemporary Southeast Asia, Band 43, Heft 1, S. 31-37

Abstract

The earliest responses to the social, economic and health crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia came from local community initiatives. Around the country, local community groups, neighbourhoods and villages worked to organize community lockdowns, providing personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers, and food and goods for people who had lost income. Within weeks, local governments responded by closing schools, implementing work-from-home policies and imposing local and provincial movement restrictions. These efforts effectively slowed the spread of the virus in the first half of 2020, providing a window that should have allowed the national government to mobilize adequate resources to establish the effective testing and contact-tracing infrastructures which international epidemiological guidelines and experience have shown are critical to containing a pandemic. (Contemp Southeast Asia / GIGA)