"Our central Task Force will go directly to the 19 red zone provinces starting tomorrow morning," Suharyanto, who is concurrently head of the FMD Task Force, stated during an online meeting in Jakarta on Friday.
Suharyanto noted that the central Task Force will help the regional task force in monitoring FMD handling to avoid price-related issues due to shortage in meat.
On the same occasion, Coordinator of the Expert Team for the FMD Task Force Wiku Adisasmito confirmed the availability of some 800 thousand doses of vaccine, of which 655 thousand doses were being distributed to majority of the areas.
"We hope to be able to complete the administration of 800 thousand doses in the next week. President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has been informed about this. There will be another 2.2 million doses coming before Eid al-Adha," he noted.
In addition, he said that another effort to expedite matters was by integrating the existing post into the FMD Task Force post to monitor livestock traffic.
It was earlier explained that only 25 provinces and 93 districts and cities were equipped with veterinary authority officials (POV) related to FMD treatment and vaccination.
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Adisasmito had urged other provinces and districts and cities to immediately choose POV for the respective region.
"In order to support the treatment and vaccination efforts, each region must have veterinary personnel, whether they are civil servant or not. POV will help to accelerate treatment and vaccination in the region with qualified human resources," he emphasized.
After treatment and vaccination, Adisasmito noted that POV will be responsible to draft a report regarding testing, tracing, and vaccination on livestock through iSIKHNAS that was integrated with the Bersatu Lawan COVID-19 application. He targeted the data integration to start in the next 12 weeks.
Related news: Central Kalimantan receives 2,700 FMD vaccine doses for first phase
Translator: Devi Nindy Sari R, Resinta S
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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