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Indonesia receives 10 million Sinovac vaccines
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Immediate delivery: A worker at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport transports containers of Sinovac bulk vaccines on Sunday. The Indonesian government has received another 10 million Sinovac bulk vaccines, adding to the total 104.7 million vaccines, with 91.5 million consisting of bulk vaccines. (Courtesy of KPC PEN)
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ndonesia received the 17th batch of 10 million bulk vaccines from Sinovac, China, on Sunday, adding to the total amount of 104.7 million vaccines, which 91.5 million of them were bulk vaccines.
Secretary-general of the Health Ministry, Oscar Primadi, said the newest arrival would be directly transported to state-owned pharmaceutical company PT Bio Farma in Bandung for further processing.
Oscar guaranteed that the government would go all out in safeguarding the production of 426.8 million vaccines. He said the vaccine arrivals were arranged through various schemes, namely bilateral, multilateral and home product explorations.
To date, Indonesia has used 2 million doses of Sinopharm vaccines, 94.5 million doses of Sinovac, with 91.5 million in the form of bulk vaccines and 8.2 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines.
Oscar added that the usage of these three vaccines have been approved WHO, thus have fulfilled international requirements for safety, product quality and effectiveness to be used during the pandemic.
He said the government would continuously expand the vaccination drives so more people would be injected. The two dose vaccines would need two or three weeks after the second vaccination to finally form body immunity.
“We needs 181.5 million of our residents to be vaccinated in order to materialize herd immunity. Vaccines play a pivotal role,” he said in a press release.
However, he also urged people to remain disciplined in implementing health protocols, namely wearing masks, avoiding crowds and maintaining distance, if they have been vaccinated.
“May we all be under God’s protection and that this pandemic could be fully under control,” he said.
He then highlighted the important roles of vaccines by mentioning the speedy recovery of 90 percent of already vaccinated health workers who were infected by COVID-19 while serving new patients in Kudus, Central Java. He added right now, these health workers have gradually recovered and started to treat patients again in a week period.
The total number of health workers in Kudus is 6,000 people and almost 100 percent of them have been vaccinated.
Along with Bangkalan in East Java, Kudus has been among the worst hit by COVID-19 following Idul Fitri. The soaring number of new infection cases had initially caused hospitals in both cities, Kudus and Bangkalan to become overwhelmed.
Patients from both cities, Kudus and Bangkalan, have been admitted to hospitals in Semarang and Surabaya. The government had also intensified vaccinations in the regions.
Vaccinations have significantly reduced confirmed cases in many countries. The US, for example, has been able to reduce the number of confirmed cases from 300,000 cases per day to just 12,000 cases per day thanks to the country’s massive vaccination of 1 million people per day. To date, the US has reached 91.57 percent of the population.
Similarly, in Britain, where 101.5 percent of the population has been vaccinated, it has reduced the number of daily new cases from 60,000 to 5,000 daily cases.
