Communications and Information Minister Johnny G. Plate said in a press briefing on Monday that there were now five spokespersons from four institutions that were leading sectors in handling COVID-19 and rolling out vaccinations.

The three new appointees are the Health Ministry's director for direct infectious diseases, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, the Indonesian Food and Drug Monitoring Agency's (BPOM) drug registration director, Lucia Rizka Andalucia, and state-owned pharmaceutical company PT Bio Farma corporate secretary Bambang Heriyanto.

They join the national COVID-19 task force head of the expert team, Wiku Adisasmito, and medical doctor and TV personality Reisa Broto Asmoro, both of whom are already government spokespersons for COVID-19 affairs.

Johnny said that while Wiku would mainly cover the scientific aspects of vaccines and the umbrella message of vaccination and COVID-19 in Indonesia, Nadia would provide information on vaccination policies and vaccine permits.

Lucia would focus on vaccine permits and safety and Bambang would provide information on vaccine types, logistics and distribution across Indonesia, Johnny said.

Read also: Indonesia spends $45 million to procure millions of vaccine doses from China this year

"The appointment of spokespersons from leading sectors and the assignment of a specific field of information to each spokesperson are aimed to make public information and communication dissemination more accurate, thorough and responsive," Johnny said.

Aside from preparing for logistical issues, experts have called on the government to anticipate anti-vaccine sentiment, which still exists even with existing vaccines for other diseases.

Among the concerns are vaccines' halal status, which previously hindered the vaccination campaign for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), as well as rampant misinformation on the internet.

According to a recent global survey carried out between November 2015 and December 2019 in more than 149 countries, Indonesia has seen “large drops in confidence" in three key aspects: vaccine safety, significance and effectiveness. The survey was described by health journal The Lancet as the "largest global vaccine confidence survey".

The government issued on Friday a decree to allow for the use of vaccines produced by PT Bio Farma, United Kingdom-based AstraZeneca, China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech and US pharma Moderna. The vaccine being jointly produced by US firm Pfizer and German company BioNTech was also given approval.

The candidate vaccines are still in their final-stage clinical trials to determine their efficacy, but China has issued emergency use approval for essential workers and other limited groups of people considered at high risk of infection, while the United Kingdom has granted such approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to various reports. 

Indonesia is still awaiting the BPOM's emergency use approval for the Sinovac vaccine. (ars)

Editor’s note: This article is part of a public campaign by the COVID-19 task force to raise people’s awareness about the pandemic.