Government officials are usually very quick to dismiss comments comparing Indonesia’s pandemic response with other countries.

Some countries are too small, some more developed, or both, to be compared with Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous and very diverse country, but a valid comparison with India is hard to deny, since they are both sizable, democratic countries with economies that are still developing.

With unprecedented numbers of daily cases and deaths in the past week, and a collapsed healthcare system, Indonesia appears to be looking to India -- which managed to reduce the virus spread within two months – in the hope that there could be an end to the current nightmare.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has said he and his ministers have had close contacts with their Indian counterparts to learn from their experiences.

Coordinating Economic Affairs Minister Airlangga Hartanto, who chairs the COVID-19 Handling and National Economic Recovery Committee (KPCPEN), even claimed that Indonesia’s response was nearly identical to what India was doing two months ago.

“We have seen the cycle [of the Delta variant] in India, how long will it take for this variant go down and the solution we’re implementing is almost the same as what is being done in India,” Airlangga told a press briefing on Friday.

Indonesia has implemented a stricter COVID-19 policy called emergency public activity restrictions (PPKM Darurat) across Java and Bali from July 3 until 20 in a bid to curb the exponential spread of the Delta variant, first discovered in India. The government on Monday expanded them to 15 other regions where infections are surging.

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