The COVID-19 pandemic emerged in December 2019 and swiftly became a global crisis, heavily impacting Indonesia. The country reported its first COVID-19 case within eight weeks of the outbreak and experienced a peak of over 64,000 daily cases on February 16, 2022, and 2,069 daily deaths on July 27, 2021. By June 2023, Indonesia had over 6.81 million cases and 161,857 deaths. Indonesia’s response faced significant challenges, particularly in testing and vaccination uptake. The country had a relatively low number of tests per capita, with 80 percent of the population refusing tests in the early phase due to various factors. Testing capacity increased from 28.42 to 217.36 tests per thousand people between March 2021 and 2022 - marking progress but still lagging Malaysia and Thailand. Vaccination uptake was slow, especially in some geographic regions and subgroups, achieving 70 percent coverage for primary doses but facing challenges with booster uptake. This policy brief documents lessons from Indonesia’s public health risk communication efforts. It assesses what challenges were faced, what strategies were employed to tackle them and what the outcomes were in terms of improved knowledge and practices for infection prevention, as well as in generating demand for testing and vaccination. The findings intend to provide insights and lessons to enhance future public health communication and emergency response strategies on pandemic preparedness and inform policy decisions.