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RI has sufficient vaccines but it will take discipline to beat COVID-19
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On time: A new batch of bulk vaccines from Sinovac Biotech Ltd, China, arrives at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in South Tangerang, Banten, on Monday. Some 8 million bulk vaccines in four envirotainers were directly transported to state-owned pharmaceutical company PT Biofarma’s facilities in Bandung, West Java. This batch, the 14th, adds to the 91.9 million doses in both forms, vaccine and bulk, that have been received by the government and are currently being given to priority groups of people. (Courtesy of the COVID-19 Response and Economic Recovery Committee/. )
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he government has received another batch of 8 million of bulk vaccines from Sinovac Biotech Ltd in China, adding to the 91.9 million bulk and ready-to-use vaccines already received.
Despite the sufficient supplies, State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) Minister Erick Thohir, who is also the executive director of the government’s COVID-19 Response and Economic Recovery Committee, expected people to maintain strict discipline so they can suppress the virus transmission and restart the country’s economy.
“We are grateful that despite the global disruption to vaccine supply, we’ve managed to keep ours safe. And there is more coming our way,” Erick told a press conference held at the cargo terminal at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Monday.
Erick added that the combination of the large number of people who have received the COVID-19 vaccine while at the same time maintaining health protocol discipline would not only be great news for public health but also a boost to the country’s economy.
“So we can meet our economic development target this year, which has been set at the range of 4.1 to 5.1 percent,” he said.
The new bulk vaccines were shipped in three large specially designed containers, called envirotainers, and one smaller one. They are now stored at the state-owned pharmaceutical company PT Bio Farma in Bandung, West Java, to be further processed into ready-to-use vaccines.
Previously, Indonesia had received 3 million ready-to-use vaccine doses and 81.5 million doses of bulk vaccine from Sinovac. The first batch of Sinovac’s bulk vaccine was then processed into 65.5 million ready-to-use vaccine doses.
The gap between the size of the bulk vaccine in the initial batch and the final product is due to wastage and overfill during the production process.
The government has also received another 6.41 million doses from Astra Zeneca, 1 million from Sinopharm, of which 500,000 doses were in the form of a grant from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“So in total, we have managed to secure 75.9 million ready-to-use vaccine doses so far,” Erick said as quoted by the committee's press release.
The government, he said, was also in the middle of developing the country’s in-house vaccine, called the Red and White vaccine, with a number of universities, research laboratories and pharmaceutical companies.
Erick then continued that up to this date, 26.85 million doses had been used on priority groups throughout the country. Currently, the government has allowed people ranging from early 50s to take the jabs.
The government has also allowed private companies to organize inoculations for their employees by purchasing the vaccines from the government. Under the “Gotong Royong” scheme, popularly known as mutual cooperation, some big private companies have started the program.
The program has been aimed at accelerating the number of vaccinated people and also to help private companies to restart their businesses that has been greatly hampered by the pandemic during the last year.
The government has earlier targeted to have inoculated 181.5 million people by March 2022 and to be able to do just that, it would need all hands on deck.
According to http://covid-19.go.id’s May 31 data, 100,006 cases are spotted, with 1,821,703 confirmed to be contracted, 1,669,119 people are cured and 50,578 people dead. New cases have been spotted increasing in many parts of the country, especially in Java Island, due to people’s lack of discipline in maintaining healthy protocol and disobedience to the government’s announcement to stay home during the Eid Fitri’s holiday season.
