CISDI Cast Doubt on The One-year Vaccination Target

The Covid-19 vaccination which is targeted to be completed in less than one year, President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo said on Thursday (21/1) during the opening of Kompas100 CEO forum is deemed unreachable. 

 

It is expected that the vaccination can be completed as soon as possible to reduce the spread of the covid-19 virus. According to Jokowi, vaccinations must be carried out as much as possible in a short time to accelerate the handling of the pandemic. This target is also supported by the availability of health centers and vaccinators. "There are 30,000 vaccinators, in one day (they) can work on 30, it means that one day can do 1 million (people to get vaccinated),” he said. 

 

However, this target seems incompatible with the reality ahead. Vaccines that have arrived, need to be authorized by the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) before being distributed to the public. This process itself takes time. There are only 3 million doses of vaccines that have been circulated, while the population of Indonesia is 270.6 million people. Meanwhile, according to the Decree of the Director General of Disease Prevention and Control, every person needs to be injected with two doses of vaccine, so that the current number is still far from sufficient for all Indonesian people. 

 

The one-year target is considered “too ambitious” for Olivia Herlinda, Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives (CISDI) policy director. The government needs to rush the permit applications for the vaccines to get it done in one-year, but it is almost impossible, Herlinda said as quoted on thejakartapost.com on Wednesday (6/1). She added that in terms of community acceptance, the government had not done enough to reduce stigma and misinformation at the grassroots level in order to secure participants