COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Slows Down Significantly, Health Ministry Reports

TheIndonesia.id - The Ministry of Health reported that COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Indonesia significantly slowed down in May, citing the declining case numbers and the relatively high vaccination rate as some of the main causes.

Director general of pharmaceuticals and medical devices at the Ministry Lucia Rizka Andalusia said vaccine distribution in the country declined quite sharply, and it was driven by the high numbers of Indonesians that have received their vaccine doses.

“Vaccine distribution rate has been gradually declining, and it’s probably due the declining COVID-19 cases and that many people have been partially and fully vaccinated. And as a result, our vaccine demand has also drastically dropped,” Andalusia said on Tuesday, May 31, as reported by Antara.

According to the Ministry, on May 1-28, 3,640,342 vaccine doses were distributed to regions across Indonesia. And the number is a huge fall from 15,374,764 in March and 16,235,972 in April.

It was also reported that about 47 millions of vaccine doses are currently available in the country until the end of this year while the necessary doses needed to reach vaccination target are 44.8 million doses.

Meanwhile, acting director of immunization management at the Ministry Prima Yosephine also said that within the last seven days, on average, there are 217,000 vaccine injections done per day. And the relatively low figure will inevitably have an impact to the expiration date of COVID-19 vaccines in Indonesia.

“There will be vaccines whose shelf lives expires, so they can’t be used anymore. For that case, we continue to accelerate COVID-19 vaccination, especially for the second and booster doses for the high-risk people,” Yosephine said.