Today, we again received the COVID-19 vaccine doses to be administered to all Indonesian citizens.Jakarta (ANTARA) - State-owned Enterprises (SOE) Minister, concurrently the COVID-19 Handling and National Economic Recovery Committee Chief, Erick Thohir received eight million doses of bulk vaccine developed by Sinovac on Monday.
“Today, we again received the COVID-19 vaccine doses to be administered to all Indonesian citizens,” Thohir stated during an online press conference on the arrival of the Sinovac vaccine at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Tangerang, Banten, on Monday.
Thohir expounded that a total of 26.9 million Indonesian citizens had received the COVID-19 vaccine shots until now, with the figure projected to continually increase. In comparison with other South-East Asian countries, Indonesia is one nation in the area with high vaccination rates.
“Are we already satisfied? No! Our vaccination level is still low as compared to other developed countries, such as China and the United States. This what we have to increase,” he stressed.
The minister noted that through vaccination, support can be extended to the country to stem the spread of COVID-19, prevent pandemic-induced deaths, and the most importantly, expedite the nation’s economic recovery.
“From the start, the government has been consistent with the programs of Indonesia Sehat (Healthy Indonesia), Indonesia Bekerja (Working Indonesia), and Indonesia Tumbuh (Growing Indonesia). Hence, the vaccination and COVID-19 pandemic handling are deemed the most important aspect,” he remarked.
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Indonesia has received some eight million vaccine doses from Sinovac on Monday (May 31). The vaccines that arrived in bulk form will then be processed by Bio Farma.
Collectively, with the arrival of vaccine doses today, Indonesia received a total of 92,910,500 doses, with 81.5 million doses being in bulk form.
Vaccine supply is critical to the smooth implementation of the COVID-19 vaccination program. Since the start of the program, state-owned enterprise Bio Farma was tasked with processing the bulk vaccine into ready-to-use vaccine as well as distributing it across the Indonesian regions. Hence, careful and comprehensive planning, preparation, and execution are deemed necessary to ensure that these tasks are implemented optimally, it stated.
Bio Farma has readied the production capacity of 250 million doses of vaccine in a year.
In pursuit of its target, Bio Farma also improved efficiency and optimization, so until today, its production capacity had increased to 257.6 million doses per year.
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Translator: Juwita Trisna, Aji Cakti
Editor: Fardah Assegaf
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