Jakarta. Indonesia has started preparing for the next pandemic, according to one of President Prabowo Subianto’s siblings, as Jakarta wants to prevent a virus from taking down its economy and claiming countless lives again, just like when Covid-19 struck the world a few years ago.

Speaking at a climate-related conference, Prabowo’s younger brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo said work was underway to make Indonesia self-sufficient in food supplies. Its farms are already producing more than enough rice for its people, putting Indonesia at a “basically secure” position.

The businessman then suddenly switched topics to future pandemics.

“Whatever happens abroad, let’s hope there won’t be another Covid-19. But if there is another [pandemic], Indonesia is one of the countries that will survive the next Covid-19,” Hashim told the Indonesia International Sustainability Forum on Tuesday.

“Prabowo has told me personally: ‘We have to prepare for the next Covid-19, whether it happens in 10 months or years or [even] 100 years from now.”

This “long-term preparation” had already begun, although Hashim, who is also Prabowo’s climate envoy, did not go into detail about what had been in the works.

Aside from trumpeting about Indonesia’s rice supplies, Hashim told the forum that Indonesia had already embarked on a “very ambitious sustainable energy program”. The sunny country aims to build a total of 100 gigawatts of solar power by 2029.

Hashim’s pandemic comment came amidst global fears over the Russian plague. Just recently, a Russian lab technician died at a plague research facility in Siberia, which reportedly caused dozens of people to be put in isolation.

Indonesia’s economy shrank 2.07% year-on-year (yoy) in 2020 as Jakarta struggled to keep the pandemic under control. The government officially lifted its pandemic status in June 2023 following a mass vaccination rollout. Around that time, the country’s Covid-19 cases had already passed the 6.8-million mark, with over 161,800 people having died from the disease. The travel restrictions had also battered the country’s tourism sector. 

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