Nationwide COVID-19 vaccinations start 14th January
Indonesian president Joko Widodo is scheduled to be the first person to get vaccinated in Indonesia on the 13th of January, followed by healthcare workers starting from the 14th of January onward.
In a meeting with traders and business owners last month at the presidential palace, President Jokowi had mentioned that he would be the first person to receive the vaccine to show the Indonesian people that it is safe. Now, his jab has finally been scheduled.
Jokowi will receive the Sinovac vaccine
Image credit: @jokowi
The Sinovac vaccine from China that arrived in Indonesia on the 6th of December 2020 will be used on the president and on the first batch of recipients, including health workers.
These 1.2 million vaccines that arrived last month are the first batch of Sinovac vaccines from a total of 125,504,000 million Sinovac vaccines that were ordered by Indonesia.
Indonesia will have 4 stages of vaccine distribution
The vaccine rollout schedule, explained below
Image credit: Kementrian Kesehatan
According to CNN Indonesia and Kompas, there are 4 planned stages for the COVID-19 vaccine distribution in Indonesia. The first stage that will commence on the 14th of January is scheduled for January 2021-April 2021, and has been reported to target health workers, assistant doctors, and university students in the medical field.
The second stage also scheduled for January 2021-April 2021 is said to target public service workers such as the army, police, airport staff, railway station workers, and people working in banks as well as in electricity and water supply companies. Senior citizens of 60 years and above are included here too.
The third stage scheduled for April 2021- March 2022 will target socioeconomically vulnerable citizens, and the final stage from April 2021-March 2022 is to target the rest of the community subject to vaccine availability.
Indonesia to get 5 different brands of COVID-19 vaccines
Image credit: @jokowi
So far, Indonesia has ordered 329.5 million COVID-19 vaccines of various brands and aims to obtain 426 million COVID-19 vaccines in Indonesia in the future. These are to be used to vaccinate 182 million citizens in total.
At the moment, only 3 million Sinovac vaccines have been received by Indonesia. Indonesia plans to receive 50 million Novavax vaccines from Canada, 50 million Covax vaccines from Gavi, 50 million AstraZeneca vaccines from the UK, 50 million Pfizer vaccines from the USA, and 125,504,000 million Sinovac vaccines from China.
COVID-19 vaccines in Indonesia to be given free of charge
Image credit: Kevin Yudhistira Alloni
The COVID-19 vaccines in Indonesia will be given free of charge to all Indonesians residing in the country. Indonesians will get a text message on their mobile phones as an alert to tell them when they’re scheduled to receive the vaccine, with details of the time and hospital.
Indonesian minister of finance, Sri Mulyani, said that the total cost for all the vaccines is over Rp. 74 trillion (~USD5.4 billion), and is hopeful that the vaccine will curb infections and allow Indonesia’s economy to improve.
We hope COVID-19 vaccines in Indonesia will help everyone overcome the pandemic
Image credit: covid19.go.id
As of the time of writing, there have been 788,402 confirmed COVID-19 cases nationwide in Indonesia, including 23,296 fatalities and 652,513 recoveries. 112,593 patients with active infections are currently in hospital.
We hope that the rollout of nationwide COVID-19 vaccines in Indonesia will give us all the boost we need to overcome the pandemic and return to regular activities, and wish our country’s COVID-19 patients a speedy recovery.
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Cover image adapted from: @thesoniclinic & @jokowi
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