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Govt to start giving booster shots to public next week as Omicron threat looms
The government has announced it will start administering a third COVID-19 dose for members of the general public starting Jan. 12 as Omicron cases continue to rise in the country.
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Split second: A local resident receives her second Sinopharm jab during a vaccination program at Badung market in Bali on Oct. 12, 2021. As the island prepares to welcome back international tourists, 3.36 million people have been vaccinated, with 2.8 million of them receiving full doses and over 34,700 a booster. (Antara/Nyoman Hendra Wibowo)
T
he government has announced it will start administering a third COVID-19 dose for members of the general public starting Jan. 12 as Omicron cases continue to rise in the country and more cases of community transmission of the new variant are reported.
Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the booster shots would be available for people over the age of 18 who had received the second dose of vaccine at least six months ago.
"As per January, there are around 21 million people who are eligible [for the third COVID-19 dose]," Budi told a press conference on Monday.
He went on to say the booster shots would only be accessible in regions that had inoculated 70 percent of their targeted population with the first dose of COVID-19 vaccines and 60 percent with the second dose. According to Budi, 224 out of the country's around 500 regencies and cities had met the criteria.
The government will make the booster shots available free of charge to the country's 21.5 million elderly people and its 61.6 million state-subsidized national health insurance (JKN) policyholders, while around 103 million others will have to pay for the booster shots themselves.
Budi said so far the government had secured 113 million out of the 230 million doses needed to vaccinate all the target recipients for the third dose.
This announcement came as cases of the highly transmissible Omicron variant continue to rise in the country. By Monday, Indonesia had recorded 152 cases of the Omicron variant, almost a two-fold increase over the weekend.
