Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin likening efforts to deal with COVID-19 as a war against the virus. If the defense system doesn’t match, the enemy will infiltrate without realizing it.
He admitted that he got the parable from discussions with the Minister of Research and Technology / Head of the National Research and Innovation Agency (Menristek / BRIN), Bambang Brodjonegoro.
“Pak Bambang’s enlightenment made me feel like an operation counter intelligent. The enemy has infiltrated, the enemy has entered, we don’t know because we don’t have the equipment, don’t have the tools, don’t have a process to find out whether the enemy has infiltrated or not, “he explained.
He also touched on Bill Gates’ explanation about the weapon system that is more prepared for war against fellow humans, so it is not suitable for dealing with viruses. According to him, the enemy currently facing is an invisible virus.
In the signing of the SARS-CoV-2 virus Genome Surveillance collaboration between Ministry of Health-Kemenristek / BRIN, Friday (8/1/2021), Minister of Research and Technology Bambang Brodjonegoro also expressed a similar opinion. To deal with an invisible enemy, it takes more effort to understand the character of the virus. Therefore, genomics is very much needed.
“Our goal is to carry out genomic surveillance, which will mainly be divided into 2 activities, namely whole genome sequencing and specific genomic surveillance, not only for Indonesia to convey more information to the world through GSAIDs regarding the character of the COVID-19 virus in Indonesia. form of whole genome sequencing, but we also want to learn and find out more quickly if a virus mutation occurs, “said Bambang.
Not only to obtain information about the character of viruses in Indonesia, genomic surveillance is also needed to understand the effects of mutations on the effectiveness and efficacy of vaccines that have been developed for COVID-19.
“At least until now there has been no obstacle to the effectiveness and efficiency of vaccines from existing mutations,” said Bambang.
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