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Indonesia scales up vaccine deals, rollout amid devastating 'second wave'
The government is simultaneously scaling up its efforts to procure COVID-19 vaccines, expand the national vaccine drive and impose new restrictions amid the surging transmission rate that is leaving hospitals and health workers overwhelmed.
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A health worker administers a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to a train passenger on July 4, 2021at Gambir Station in Central Jakarta. State-owned railway company PT Kereta Api Indonesia has rolled out its Operational Region (Daop) 1 vaccination program for long-distance passengers at Jakarta's Gambir and Senen stations. (Antara/Rivan Awal Lingga)
The government is fast-tracking its vaccine procurement deals and scaling up the national vaccination program as part of a larger effort under the new round of restrictions to curb the alarming surge in COVID-19 cases.
After a week of record-breaking figures of more than over 20,000 cases per day, the government imposed on Saturday the emergency public activity restrictions (PPKM Darurat) through to July 20. On Monday, Indonesia broke its previous daily record of 27,233 new cases and 555 deaths on Sunday with 29,745 new infections and 558 deaths. Many hospitals in Java are overwhelmed with patients and running out of oxygen.
Last Thursday, Indonesia received 998,400 doses of the ready-to-use AstraZeneca vaccine from Japan, which promised to donate up to 2 million doses this month.
With the recent addition of over 9.2 million AstraZeneca doses, mostly through the global COVAX Facility, and 2 million doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine, Indonesia has received over 119 million vaccine doses in total as of July 1.
The majority of the country’s vaccine supply consists of CoronaVac vaccine bulk from Chinese pharmaceutical Sinovac, which must be processed into vials of individual doses before they can be administered. This process is done by state-owned pharmaceutical company PT Bio Farma in Bandung, and often results in the wastage of millions of doses.
It is estimated that the country had around 99.2 million doses of the three brands, including wastage, since the mass vaccination program started in January.
