Jakarta Health Agency head Widyastuti said at a press briefing on Jan. 14 that the city aimed to vaccinate 7.9 million people to achieve herd immunity. "It's our largest vaccination drive. Our previous mass vaccination program was only designed [to inoculate] 2 million people," said Widyastudi, without indicating the year or the targeted disease of the previous program.

Based on the official population of 10.5 million, this works out to 75.2 percent of Jakartans getting the jab.

An article published on Johns Hopkins’ COVID-19: School of Public Health Expert Insights states: “Depending how contagious an infection is, usually 50% to 90% of a population needs immunity to achieve herd immunity”. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has maintained that “The proportion of the population that must be vaccinated against COVID-19 to begin inducing herd immunity is not known.”

Read also: 'Long road' to herd immunity even with COVID-19 vaccination

The first stage of Jakarta’s COVID-19 vaccination program commenced on Thursday, with health authorities aiming to inoculate 60,000 health workers and a handful of public officials.

“We received 120,040 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from state-owned pharmaceutical firm PT Bio Farma on Jan. 11,” said Widyastuti.

Popular

RI, Australia strengthen partnership on taxing crypto assets

Analysis: Indonesia denies normalization with Israel to enter OECD

Citroen to produce electric cars in Indonesia