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'No silver bullet': Business leaders manage vaccine expectations as rollout begins
Expectation management is the watchword among business leaders and economists as Indonesia started rolling out its nationwide COVD-19 vaccination program this morning.
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A worker transports a container of Sinovac Biotech's CoronaVac vaccine on Jan. 12, 2020 at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten. Indonesia commenced its nationwide vaccination program on Wednesday, with the President becoming the first to get a jab. (Antara/Dhemas Reviyanto)
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usiness and economics figures are carefully managing their expectations on economic recovery following the rollout of Indonesia’s COVID-19 vaccination program on Wednesday morning, keeping a watchful eye over the program’s potential challenges and that it would take time until the coronavirus outbreak can be brought under control to allow businesses to resume operating normally.
“The vaccination [program] may give a boost to [consumer] confidence. But the vaccination drive is not a silver bullet and therefore, structural reform to attract investment is crucial to jack up the economy,” Bahana Sekuritas economist Satria Sambijantoro told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
Indonesia is likely to see economic growth of up to 5 percent this year, driven by the low-base effect, Satria added.
The country plunged into recession in 2020 for the first time in two decades.
The Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) on Monday issued emergency use authorization (EUA) for CoronaVac, which reported an efficacy rate of 65.3 percent in its interim analysis of late-stage trials. Indonesia is the first country outside China to issue the EUA for the COVID-19 vaccine product developed by Chinese pharmaceutial Sinovac Biotech.
Read also: President Jokowi gets first coronavirus jab
On Wednesday morning, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo became the first person in the country to receive the first dose of CoronaVac. The government’s free vaccination program is to proceed with the inoculation of around 1.3 million frontline health workers in the next few months amid an ongoing surge in COVID-19 infections and deaths.
