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Indonesia won’t reach herd immunity until 2023: Moody’s
Moody's Analytics says that Indonesia, along with four other countries in the Asia-Pacific, could fall far behind in its bid to achieve "herd resilience", with serious repercussions for economic recovery.
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About time: The latest and 14th shipment of bulk vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd. arrives at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on May 31, 2021. The bulk vaccine, which can make around 8 million individual doses, was stored in four special containers and transported directly to the facilities of state-owned pharmaceutical company PT Biofarma in Bandung, West Java. (Courtesy of the COVID-19 Response and Economic Recovery Committee/. )
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ndonesia is projected to achieve significant resilience to the coronavirus pandemic only in early 2023 or later, finding itself among several Asia-Pacific countries that may be left behind as most countries look set to achieve this by early 2022, according to Moody's Analytics.
Moody's Analytics chief APAC economist Steven G. Cochrane said Indonesia, like other countries, was facing difficulties in procuring enough vaccines and accelerating its vaccination program. Those difficulties were causing delays in the country’s attempt to vaccinate at least 65 percent of the adult population to achieve “herd resilience”.
The firm prefers “herd resilience” to “herd immunity”, arguing that the latter was not feasible because the virus was constantly mutating.
The Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand could share the same fate as Indonesia, Cochrane said.
“Indonesia and the Philippines have been struggling to roll out vaccines due to lack of access, or simply [difficulty in] getting the vaccine through the public health system,” Cochrane told reporters on Wednesday during the firm’s webinar.
This situation, according to Moody’s, puts Indonesia’s economic recovery targets “at risk”, as the country was likely to face a prolonged struggle to contain COVID-19. It also expected that the government would impose additional mobility restrictions in response to a COVID-19 resurgence at some point.
Read also: World Bank holds Indonesia’s GDP growth forecast for 2021
