Some 19 companies signed up their employees to participate in the first day of immunizations, with around 40,000 people expected to receive their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in the next three days.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo visited a factory belonging to PT Unilever Indonesia in Jababeka industrial estate in Bekasi, West Java, to oversee the first day of inoculations.

He said that the private inoculation scheme could speed up the country’s vaccination drive at a time when vaccines were scarce resources sought out by many countries.

With at least 420,000 doses of the vaccine acquired through the private sector scheme, Jokowi said he expected it to speed up the nation’s target of inoculating 181 million Indonesians – the proportion of its population required to make effective use of herd immunity.

“We expect that this target will be achieved sooner thanks to the Gotong Royong vaccine program. By August or early September, up to 70 million people should already have been vaccinated,” Jokowi said in a video statement.

The President also said the private scheme would allow industries to operate at normal capacity to assist the country’s economic recovery.

Popular

The fragile promise of pluralism, religious freedom in Southeast Asia

Coffee, gold push up inflation to 1.95 percent in April

Power begins to return after outage in Indonesia's Bali island