In Indonesia, most people earn only a couple of hundreds of dollars a month. They live from day-to-day or month-to-month. If they lose their jobs, they will have nothing to fall back on.

Although infections of Indonesian citizens by COVID-19 in other countries have been since January, the first two cases inside the country were confirmed on 2 March 2020. Until 14 March, Indonesia had less than 100 confirmed patients. However, as expected and feared by the authorities, the country had more infections than confirmed as the number of cases started to surge at an average rate of 18% between 14 March and 3 April bringing the total confirmed cases in Indonesia up from 96 to 1986. Unlike most other countries, where fewer COVID-19 patients die and many of them recover, Indonesia recorded 181 deaths compared to 134 recoveries as of 3 April 2020.

This increase in coronavirus cases puts poor families in Indonesia at risk. On the one hand, the deadly virus threatens the livelihood of nearly 100 million Indonesians who live on USD 2 or lessa day, according to international statistics. If these people cannot go out to work, it will be difficult for them to survive if the situation worsens in the coming weeks. On the other hand, these families are more vulnerable to be infected by the virus because they usually live in overcrowded slums, where social distancing may not be possible not to speak about their inability to buy face masks and hand sanitisers to protect themselves.

Millions of Indonesians moved to big cities and tourist attraction locations over the past decade. They have had substantial contributions to Southeast Asia’s biggest economy. But many of these people are now unemployed because all tourism activities are suspended in the country. For example, this may be catastrophic to f Bali’s 4.2 million population where 75% of the economy is linked to tourism. Most of Indonesians earn only a couple of hundreds of dollars a month. They live from day-to-day or month-to-month. If they lose their jobs, they will have nothing to fall back on. Therefore, fear about the disease and its impact on livelihoods is spreading.

The government tries to alleviate part of people’s suffering by increasing its expenditure to cushion the effect of the pandemic. At the end of March, it announced an increase of nearly USD 25 billion spendings. But this could badly affect the long-term economic growth as these interventions would widen the 2020 budget deficit to as much as 5.07% of gross domestic product, the widest in more than a decade. The Indonesian economy is expected to grow at 2.3%, less than half the earlier projections of 5.3% and the rupiah may fall to its weakest value of 17,500-20,000 against the US dollar. But these are the worst scenarios and the government tries to avoid them.

The Finance Minister said that it is critical to strike a balance between preventative health and economic measures.On 1 April, the Indonesian government announced that it is building a new hospital for coronavirus emergency on the uninhabited island of Galang, where the authorities have repurposed a former Vietnam war era refugee camp as part of the efforts to rapidly augment healthcare capacities. The new hospital includes 360 additional hospital beds, isolation facilities and helipads, and will be used to treat coronavirus patients and as a quarantine facility.Indonesian President Joko Widodo said it would be open by Monday,6 April 2020,at the latest.