Data received by ANTARA from the task force here on Thursday showed that the number of third dose recipients rose by 231,267 on Thursday, taking the total number of recipients to 48,269,992.
Meanwhile, the number of fully vaccinated people, or those who have received two shots under the nationwide vaccination program, swelled by 67,853 to reach 168,251,795.
The task force data also showed that the number of citizens who have received at least the first vaccine dose grew by 58,920 to touch 201,000,560 as of Thursday.
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.
Based on the task force’s data, 96.5 percent of the targeted recipients nationally have received the first vaccine dose, 80.78 percent have received the second dose, and 23.17 percent have received the third dose so far.
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Spokesperson for the COVID-19 Handling Task Force Wiku Adisasmito at a virtual press conference on Tuesday (June 14, 2022), said that health experts have agreed that currently available COVID-19 vaccines are still effective in bolstering people's immune systems against new variants.
He informed that based on the results of a study by the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the chances of infection from new COVID-19 variants, such as the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, are lower among people who have received the COVID-19 vaccine.
Adisasmito noted that according to the initial study in Europe, the new variants have a faster infection rate and can bypass immunity formed naturally through infection with previous variants.
"However, there is no indication that these variants cause more severe symptoms," he affirmed.
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Translator: Andi Firdaus, Raka Adji
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
Copyright © ANTARA 2022
