This paper examines the coordination actions conducted by the Indonesian government in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Few studies have focused on coordination issues in dealing with the pandemic. This paper then discusses the efforts to tackle the pandemic in a developing country, and from a Whole-of-Government (WOG) perspective, how the government tiers and their agencies struggle to face this pandemic. The pandemic came to Indonesia three months after it was first found in China at the end of 2019. Indonesia has several months to learn about the cases and the way to deal with the pandemic from neighbouring countries. However, the central government tends to underestimate the pandemic. Various teams and policies are then created, but the coordination between government tiers is not well managed. The poor coordination is caused by unclear response and leadership from the central government since earlier times. Moreover, the central government faces dilemmatic options on whether to prioritize health or economic options, and consequently, it makes the policies ambiguous. Some lessons are expected to improve the government’s preparedness to anticipate such disasters or outbreaks in the future. First, the government should not underestimate responding to any case, especially a new case that has never occurred before. Second, clear goals need to be set by the central government, so that all government agencies and sub-national governments have shared goals to achieve. Third, strong and consistent leadership is needed to face a particular problem. And finally, working together across organizations, both vertically and horizontally, is a requirement to run the government well to deal with such a wicked problem. Therefore, it is important to eliminate the institutional egoism of governmental tiers because we cannot work alone.