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Indonesia receives 14 million Sinovac doses in 18th vaccine batch
Indonesia received its 18th batch of vaccines, comprising 14 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine, on June 30. Stored in seven huge envirotainers, a special container for medical purposes, the vaccines were transported by Garuda GA 891.
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Ready to go: Indonesia’s 18th batch of vaccines, comprising 14 million Sinovac doses, arrives at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on June 30. The vaccines, which were stored in special containers called envirotainers, were then transported to PT Bio Farma facilities in Bandung for further processing. (Courtesy of KPC PEN)
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ndonesia received its 18th batch of vaccines, comprising 14 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine, on June 30. Stored in seven huge envirotainers, a special container for medical purposes, the vaccines were transported by Garuda GA 891. They were immediately delivered to PT Bio Farma facilities in Bandung, West Java to be further processed.
“We will need a month of processing at the Bio Farma facilities before they are ready to be used,” Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said as quoted in a media release sent to The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
Budi said that with the arrival of the 18th batch, a total of 118.7 million vaccine doses had been received by the government, comprising 13.2 million doses from Sinovac, AstraZeneca and Sinopharm. The government had earlier received 105.5 million vaccine doses from Sinovac, which became 85 million ready-to-use vaccines after final processing at Bio Farma.
To date, the government has received a total of 98.2 ready-to-use vaccine doses.
“We are still expecting vaccine donations from the COVAX GAVI coalition, AstraZeneca and Pfizer. We will have more options in the second half of the year,” he said.
Budi said the government intended to speed up the vaccination program so that by the end of the year, 181.5 million Indonesians would have been vaccinated, at least once.
He warned that vaccination does not make people totally resistant to the virus but increases the body’s immunity and thus improves its response to the virus.
“People can still get infected by COVID-19 after vaccination but thanks to better body immunity, he or she would only be slightly affected, or even be asymptomatic,” he said.
Budi also warned that being vaccinated did not mean that people could ignore the health protocols. He insisted that people maintain discipline and obey the protocols, namely wearing a face mask, maintaining distance and washing their hands. He said the current explosion of COVID-19 patients in Java and Bali demanded that people be extra cautious. The government, he went on, had committed to doubling the 3T protocol, namely testing, tracing and treatment to prevent a further surge in infections.
Budi added that the government had gone all out in preparing health facilities, maintaining medicine supply and strengthening medical workers with vaccinations for this situation.
“Now it is up to the people. Please help us to suppress the virus by staying at home so we can slow down the infection rate and thus protect ourselves, our family, society and finally our country,” he said.
The government has expanded the vaccination target by adding people over the age of 12 to the list, following the growing number of infections in teenagers in the last few weeks.
Up to June 29, as many as 28.3 million people had got their first vaccination while 13.3 million people had had their second vaccination.
But vaccine recipients under the Gotong Royong scheme were still excluded.
The Gotong Royong scheme was tailored for companies to buy the vaccine from the government and conduct internal vaccinations targeting their own employees.
The government has allocated 2 million Sinopharm vaccine doses to the Gotong Royong scheme. To date, mining giants such as PT Freeport Indonesia and PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara have organized vaccinations for employees.
