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Jakarta races to give 400,000 AstraZeneca jabs before expiry date
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A police officer stands guard near a shipping container containing doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, on May 8. (Antara/Fauzan)
T
he Jakarta administration is speeding up its COVID-19 vaccination drive to make use of 400,000 AstraZeneca doses set to expire by the end of the month.
The Health Ministry’s acting director general for disease control and prevention, Maxi Rein Rondonuwu, has asked health authorities in the capital to give at least 30,000 AstraZeneca shots daily to avoid wasting the vaccines, which are in limited supply.
"If Jakarta cannot reach the target, we'll send the jabs to Bali, as the province's vaccine supplies are running out," Maxi said on Tuesday, as reported by Kompas.com.
Bali has the highest vaccine coverage rate in the country, having managed to inoculate 69.3 percent of its priority residents. Jakarta comes in second with about 61 percent of its priority population vaccinated.
Bambang Heriyanto, corporate secretary at state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma, which is involved in both the state and private sector inoculation campaigns, said Jakarta had received around 6.7 million vaccine doses from the central government, 1.1 million of which were of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Read also: Vaccination of ‘vulnerable groups’ begins amid expert skepticism
The Jakarta Post was not able to independently verify the figure. Jakarta Deputy Governor Ahmad Riza Patria told the press on Wednesday that the city had received only 4.4 million doses of the vaccine so far.
