"It is necessary to increase the achievement of booster vaccinations," she stressed when contacted by ANTARA here on Friday.
Dharmasanti also highlighted the need to strengthen the compliance of people, especially vulnerable people, with the COVID-19 health protocols and testing.
In the face of the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia, it is necessary to map out problems related to the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants to strengthen decision-making to deal with the pandemic, which has not yet ended, she opined.
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.
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According to data provided by the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, as of July 1, 2022, as many as 201,534,795 Indonesians have received the first vaccine dose, 169,071,865 have received the second dose, and 50,746,531 have received the booster dose.
Earlier, speaking at the Jakarta International Container Terminal (JICT), Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, on June 26, 2022, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin had urged the community to get the vaccine promptly to strengthen immunity against COVID-19.
The Ministry of Health, together with the University of Indonesia, is conducting the third serosurvey from June to July 2022 to measure the level of antibodies in vaccine recipients.
The survey is required to provide scientific, fact-based inputs for President Joko Widodo to decide on the government's policy direction.
The minister informed that the first serosurvey had shown that around 88 percent of Indonesians had developed antibodies against COVID-19, while the second serosurvey found that 99.2 percent of citizens had antibodies against the virus.
Sadikin said the serosurvey will be carried out regularly to monitor coronavirus transmission in the community.
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Translator: Martha Herlinawati, Raka Adji
Editor: Suharto
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