Indonesia's president pledged to improve Covid-19 testing and treatment in a speech on Monday, marking the country's independence and said the pandemic has changed Indonesian culture in ways that would be a foundation for advancement, AP reports.

“Wearing masks, not shaking hands and avoiding crowds of people were once taboo, while working from home, distance learning, online meetings and online court have become new habits that we used to be hesitant to do,” President Joko Widodo said in the national address marking the country's 76th anniversary of independence.

Amid todays disruptive world, the spirit to change, the spirit to make changes and the spirit to innovate have become the foundation to build an advanced Indonesia, Widodo said.

Indonesia aims to inoculate more than 208 million of its 270m people by March 2022, but authorities have only fully vaccinated 28m people and partially vaccinated another 30.5m so far.