"I believe with the help of technology, telemedicine will be ready to connect health facilities and vaccine recipients. I hope our government can work on that," he said at an online press conference on Thursday.
If the government and developers succeed in creating such a program, it would simplify the registration process and make getting COVID-19 vaccines easier for people, he pointed out.
Currently, most telemedicine services from application developers are aiming to accelerate COVID-19 vaccinations across several vaccination centers, he said.
Vaccination centers generally administer mass vaccinations so they are required to make excellent arrangements to ensure compliance with health protocols, especially in terms of social distancing and crowd control, he added.
If access to telemedicine services can reach up to the nearest health facility, such as a public health centers (Puskesmas), more people could potentially become interested in getting vaccinated, Faqih said. The more vaccination centers are opened, the smaller is the crowd that would gather, he added.
"If we could make access to vaccinations easier, more people will get vaccinated," he remarked.
According to Faqih, vaccine registrations should be connected to health service facilities available in all regions in Indonesia in order to reach more vaccine recipients. He said that there are more than 10 thousand healthcare facilities that can hold mass vaccinations in the country.
"I hope that involving telemedicine in the vaccination program can help the government to reach herd immunity," Faqih said.
As of July 22, 2021, 42.2 million Indonesians have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 16.7 million have been fully vaccinated against the virus.
The Indonesia government is targeting to vaccinate 208.2 million people by the end of 2021 to build herd immunity and suppress COVID-19 transmission.
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Translator: Livia Kristianti, Resinta Suli
Editor: Sri Haryati
Copyright © ANTARA 2021
