JAKARTA (INDONESIA) – Indonesia introduced one of the world’s biggest COVID-19 vaccination campaigns on Wednesday, and President Joko Widodo got the first shot of a Chinese vaccine as his country is facing one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in Asia.
The drive aims to vaccinate 181.5 million people. The first to be vaccinated will be receiving the CoronaVac vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech, which Indonesia has given approval for emergency use on Monday.
The president, who is known as Jokowi, got his shot at the presidential palace.
Jokowi said after getting his injection, “Vaccination is important to break the chain of COVID-19 transmission and give protection to us and safety to every Indonesian and help accelerate economic recovery.”
Some other officials being vaccinated flaunted their shot marks to waiting journalists and flexed their arms.
Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin has said nearly 1.5 million medical workers would be inoculated by February, and public servants and the general population would follow suit within 15 months.
Unlike many countries, Indonesia aims to vaccinate its working population first, rather than the elderly, probably due to the fact that it does not have enough data from clinical trials on the efficacy of CoronaVac on older people.
Indonesia on Tuesday reported a daily record 302 coronavirus deaths, taking fatalities to 24,645. Its infections are on the highest point averaging more than 9,000 a day, with 846,765 total cases.
Hans Kwee, director at investment manager Anugerah Mega Investama, said, “Vaccinations contributed a fairly positive market sentiment.”
Southeast Asia’s largest economy suffered its first recession in more than two decades last year because of the pandemic, with the government estimating a contraction of as much as 2.2%.
The government has said two-thirds of the 270 million population must receive vaccinations to achieve herd immunity, with the cost of the programme likely to be more than 74 trillion rupiah ($5.26 billion).
Olivia Herlinda, a researcher at the Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives, said authorities had not taken into consideration the vaccine efficacy and virus reproduction rate, which would justify its focus on herd immunity.
Epidemiologist Masdalina Pane said that vaccines had to be coupled with increased testing and tracing.
“There’s not one bullet,” she said.
Budi said Indonesia’s testing and tracing needed improvemenrt, adding there was a disparity in testing resources across the archipelago.
Indonesia has said its trials have shown that CoronaVac has an efficacy rate of 65.3%, however, Brazilian researchers said on Tuesday the vaccine was only 50.4% effective.
Bambang Heriyanto, corporate secretary of Bio Farma, the Indonesian company involved in the trials, said the Brazilian data was still above the 50% benchmark laid out by the World Health Organization.
Indonesia is looking forward to get another 122.5 million doses of CoronaVac by January 2022, with about 30 million doses due by the end of the first quarter this year.
It has also secured nearly 330 million doses of other vaccines, including from AstraZeneca and Pfizer and its partner BioNTech.