In the 2022 State Budget draft, the government has allocated Rp255.3 trillion for the health sector, or 9.4 percent of the total planned state expenses of Rp2,708.7 trillion.
“These three health strategies -- behavior change, detection, and vaccination -- will continue until the pandemic turns into an epidemic. They are still needed even though cases have decreased; they may even become part of our daily lives in the future," Sadikin said at an online press conference on the Financial Note and the 2022 State Budget Draft here on Monday.
Active COVID-19 cases will continue to be controlled to keep them below 600 thousand because only 120 thousand out of 400 thousand hospital beds can be allocated for COVID-19 patients, he informed.
The minister emphasized that health protocols must continue to be applied because the use of masks alone can reduce the potential for COVID-19 transmission by up to 90 percent. Then, testing and tracing must also continue to be increased, he added.
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"If we know (our COVID-19 positive status), we can isolate (ourselves), so we can reduce the rate of transmission. Because we know the enemy of this pandemic is the virus transmission that is very fast, even though the mortality rate is lower than TB or HRV," the minister said.
Regarding vaccinations, he said that he had obtained a vaccine purchase contract that would help meet the needs of 208 million Indonesians. He informed that 70 million vaccine doses would arrive in Indonesia in August 2021 and 90 million doses in September 2021.
Vaccinations in these two months will also be more massive than in the first seven months of 2021, when Indonesia had only received 90 million vaccine doses, Sadikin said.
"Now, we will intensify vaccinations in provinces with high mortality rates and high confirmed cases," he added.
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Translator: Sanya Dinda, Raka Adji
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
Copyright © ANTARA 2021
