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Govt works to ensure boosters won't outpace primary doses
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A health worker prepares to give the Pfizer COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine at a makeshift clinic at the Aceh Museum in Banda Aceh on Jan. 17, 2022. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
T
he government has promised to continue accelerating the primary COVID-19 vaccination among the country's target population of 234 million, despite having started rolling out booster shots to the general public last week.
Health authorities are seeking to complete the two-dose inoculation program for both adults and children by midyear, while ensuring that Indonesia has enough supply for primary and booster vaccinations.
"With our current vaccination rate of around 1.3 million doses a day, we could finish primary inoculation for adults and teenagers [aged 12 and above] by April and by June for [younger] children," Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin told a hearing with lawmakers overseeing health care on Tuesday.
The government began inoculating some 26 million children aged 6 to 11 in December of last year – around 10 months after the mass vaccination drive for adults started and some five months after teenagers began receiving the primary shots. So far, 39 percent of eligible children aged 6 to 11, or around 10 million, have received the first dose.
Last week, authorities started administering booster shots for people aged 18 and above – aiming to jab some 179 million people – in an effort to strengthen the population’s immunity in response to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
Around 170,000 people have received a third dose since the campaign started, Budi said.
The booster rollout came amid concerns that providing an additional dose to fully vaccinated people could exacerbate vaccine inequity across the country, as a large portion of the target population has yet to receive either their second or even first shots.
