The city will not only be green, healthy, and technologically advanced, but also ready against pandemic.
Jakarta (ANTARA) - The new national capital (IKN) Nusantara will be designed to be ready against pandemics that may occur in the future, State Intelligence Agency (BIN) head Budi Gunawan said in a statement issued on Friday.

"IKN Nusantara's design also implements the various lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. The city will not only be green, healthy, and technologically advanced, but also ready against pandemic," he informed.

If there are people who believe that now is not the time to build the national capital due to the pandemic, Gunawan said he would disagree with them.

He said that he would respond that now is exactly the time to build Nusantara as a pandemic-resilient city.

Within the last two years, a lot of literature on pandemic resilient cities has been published because it is deemed to be one of the world's future challenges, he informed.

Disaster- and pandemic-resilient city design will complement the nation's defense system in the health department, Gunawan explained.

In addition, it will also complement the development of production independence for vaccines, medicines, and equipment as well as strengthen the surveillance system, forecasting and analytics as part of the medical intelligence development.

"A nation's ability to survive is determined by its capability to learn the lesson from every tragedy," he said.

"Are we going to just ignore COVID-19, even though it has been recorded as the most equally transformative event in the world thus far?" he added.

Meanwhile, the government has continued to relax social restrictions, including removing the ban on homecoming for the 2022 Eid al-Fitr and quarantine for international travelers.

Indonesia is following in the steps of many countries to live with the coronavirus.

"Indonesia conducts a scenario toward pandemic to endemic transition, or new normal living," Gunawan said.

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Translator: Fauzi, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Suharto
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