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Private COVID-19 vaccination touted as ‘gotong royong’ effort, but can it really help?
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A vendor shows his COVID-19 vaccination card after being inoculated at the Melong Market in Cimahi, West Java on Feb. 24, 2021. Health authorities inoculated 95 vendors in the market with the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine in an attempt to curb coronavirus transmission. (Antara/Raisan Al Farisi)
T
he government and business players have been promoting a planned private vaccination scheme as a form of gotong royong (mutual cooperation) to help the country achieve herd immunity faster.
The scheme, dubbed the Gotong Royong Vaccination Program, will allow business owners to buy their own supplies of vaccine to be distributed to their employees. The vaccines will be administered by private health care facilities or vaccinators, who are also involved in the government’s free vaccination drive.
“There has been misinformation that the Gotong Royong Vaccination Program is designated for rich people. This is for the workers,” National COVID-19 Response and Economic Recovery Committee spokesperson Arya Sinulingga said during a virtual discussion on Tuesday.
While the Health Ministry is still preparing a technical regulation for the scheme, it stated that it would use different brands of vaccine from those used in the government’s free vaccination program amid concerns that the private scheme would disrupt the latter.
Indonesia is aiming to inoculate 181.5 million people under its free vaccination drive that is expected to run until 2022. For this program, health authorities would need around 426 million doses – most of which are fulfilled using the vaccine produced by Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
Read also: Indonesia has limited vaccine supplies. Is it prioritizing the right groups?
The ministry is assigned to regulate the procurement, distribution and execution of the private scheme, including the recipients’ registration to make sure that they are not registered under the free scheme.
