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First homegrown COVID vaccines seek receivers
With inoculation demand dwindling and the end of the pandemic in sight, it remains unclear whether health authorities could effectively distribute the planned tens of millions of doses of the new vaccines to the public.
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A student receives a COVID-19 booster dose during a vaccine drive on July 13 at SMA 1 Klaten state senior high school in Central Java. (Antara/Aloysius Jarot Nugroho)
T
he government is seeking to use domestically produced COVID-19 vaccines, which have recently been approved by the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) for emergency use, to meet most of the country's vaccine needs.
However, with inoculation demand dwindling and the end of the pandemic in sight, it remains unclear whether health authorities could effectively distribute the planned tens of millions of doses of the new vaccines to the public.
As of Friday, the Health Ministry has a stock of around 5 million COVID-19 vaccines. The ministry's Pharmacy Management and Services director, Dina Sintia Pamela, said the government was not planning to import more COVID-19 vaccines from other countries and would start to rely on local productions to meet Indonesia's vaccine needs.
According to Dina, despite Indonesia's huge vaccine needs, authorities were still scrambling to use the 5 million doses stockpiled before they expired.
"The ministry is shuffling doses around from provinces with a slower vaccination pace such as in North Maluku and East Nusa Tenggara to regions with a faster inoculation rate such as Bali and Yogyakarta in the hope of preventing the vaccines from going to waste," she said.
As per August, Indonesia has disposed of more than 40 million doses of expired COVID-19 vaccines. Demand for vaccination from the public has been dropping drastically since April of this year despite the government's various efforts to boost the rollout.
The Health Ministry managed to administer almost 30 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in March, around 967,000 jabs per day, but in September the number sharply dropped to 4.8 million doses a month, around 162,000 per day.
