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Doubts loom over Indonesia’s vaccination plans
The recent flip-flop on whether to make COVID-19 vaccines free has polarized public sentiment against the government.
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Health workers administer a COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccine drive simulation at Udayana Military Command in Denpasar, Bali, on Dec. 10. (Antara/Nyoman Hendra Wibowo)
F
or Ardan, 24, who asked to go by his second name, the fiasco surrounding Indonesia’s COVID-19 vaccination program has made him somewhat restless.
The creative economy worker from Surabaya, East Java said he was concerned that the current confusion would serve to fuel conspiracy theories being peddled by his mother. He said she didn't believe COVID-19 was real.
“[She] doubts the vaccines, whether they are truly of any benefit or that they might even be dangerous, especially after reports of them coming in from China,” Ardan said.
“She might not even want the vaccine for free, let alone pay for it.”
Ardan’s experience has more or less confirmed what some experts believe to be a common sticking point in the private inoculation scheme that the government revealed last week.
They are saying the COVID-19 vaccination program is at risk of being rejected by the people, and that mistrust in the plan has only increased. This comes on top of concerns that tens of millions of Indonesia’s poor might not even be able to afford the vaccine.
"One of the biggest challenges in COVID-19 vaccination is that anti-vaccine campaigns and conspiracy theories are gaining traction even before the vaccines themselves are available,” global health researcher Dicky Budiman from Griffith University in Australia told The Jakarta Post.
