Jakarta (ANTARA) - As many as 37.45 million Indonesian citizens have received the third or booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Thursday, the COVID-19 Handling Task Force has reported.

According to data received from the task force by ANTARA here on Thursday, the number of citizens who have received the booster dose swelled by 1,397,440 on Thursday, taking the total tally to 37,458,813.

Overall, the booster dose coverage has reached 17.99 percent so far.

Meanwhile, the number of fully vaccinated people, or those who have received two vaccine doses, increased by 318,457 to reach 164,657,310 on Thursday.

An increase was also recorded in the number of first dose recipients. Based on the data, the number of people who received the first shot jumped by 78,179 to touch 199,191,893.

As part of efforts to boost community immunity against COVID-19, the Indonesian government launched a nationwide vaccination program on January 13, 2021, targeting as many as 208,265,720 citizens across the country.

With the increase on Thursday, the first dose vaccination coverage has reached 95.64 percent of the targeted recipients, while the second dose coverage has reached 79.06 percent.

Earlier, government spokesperson for COVID-19 Handling, Wiku Adisasmito, had urged all provinces to increase their COVID-19 vaccination coverage, saying there are some provinces where second dose vaccination coverage has not reached 70 percent yet.

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"The achievement of the national vaccination is quite good even though the distribution of vaccination coverage still has to be improved. Even the data shows that there are still some regions where the complete vaccine dose coverage has not yet reached the target of 70 percent," he said.

He stressed that the public must remain alert to the possibility of COVID-19 transmission.

Each individual must have a sense of responsibility for keeping the number of COVID-19 cases under control, the spokesperson added.

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Translator: Zubi Mahrofi, Raka Adji
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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