Indonesia to Fully Vaccinate 208 Million Citizens by March 2022

TheIndonesia.id - The Health Ministry is targeting to fully vaccinate 208,265,720 million Indonesians against COVID-19 by March 2022, spokesperson for COVID-19 vaccinations for the ministry, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, informed here on Tuesday, December 28, 2021.

"We will expedite the vaccination program to meet the target by March 2022," she said during a virtual dialogue on ‘Starting the New Year with New Habits’ as reported by Antara.

The government will improve vaccination coverage in Indonesia, she said. So far, 75.5 percent of the targeted recipients have received the first dose and 53 percent have received the second dose, she noted.

“Initially, we expected to reach 80 percent first dose vaccination coverage and 60 percent (second dose) vaccination coverage by the end of December 2021,” she said.

However, it seems that the ministry will only be able to achieve around 77 percent coverage for the first dose and around 56–57 percent coverage for the second dose, she added.

The spokesperson said that the vaccination program has started to cover underdeveloped, frontier, and outermost regions, which were previously hard to reach due to difficult geography and limited transportation. The program must be accelerated for the elderly since only 63.6 percent of them have received the first dose, she added.

In addition, the ministry expects vaccinations of children aged 6–11 to be completed by June 2022, Tarmizi disclosed.

The government is also planning to launch two schemes for booster vaccinations -- private-funded and government-funded -- in early 2022, considering that the Omicron variant can spread very quickly, she said.

"In addition, the efficacy of the vaccines is declining after a certain period," she added.

As of December 28, 2021, the ministry has confirmed 47 Omicron cases, 46 imported, and one involving local transmission.