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Govt advances new vaccine plan as elderly jabs lag
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A health worker gives a COVID-19 vaccine to a student at SMAN 20 state high school in Jakarta on July 1. (Antara/Indrianto Eko Suwarso)
T
he Health Ministry has announced it will seek to administer a first COVID-19 vaccine dose to 181.5 million Indonesians by the end of the year, three months earlier than the initial plan, even though the current drive has covered less than a quarter of the elderly population.
As of Wednesday, 22.97 percent of the nation’s elderly, or 4.7 million people, had received their first dose. Of those, 2.9 million had received their second. The age group is among most vulnerable to COVID-19, as the risk of hospitalization increases notably for people in their 50s and continues to increase every ten years thereafter. The elderly were also among the earliest target groups for vaccination, starting in February.
As the country continues to set new daily case records, with 34,379 new cases and over 343,000 active cases on Wednesday, the government has pinned its hopes of overcoming the pandemic on the expansion of the vaccination program.
Children aged 12 and above were recently included in the program, and eligibility has been expanded to foreign nationals who are over the age of 60, who work in education or who have certain types of stay permits. Initially, only representatives of foreign countries or international nonprofit organizations were eligible.
Health Ministry spokesperson Siti Nadia Tarmizi said that if the government held off expanding the program until the entire senior age group had been vaccinated, it would take longer for the wider population to be inoculated.
“The vaccination expansion can actually boost the elderly vaccine drive because they can now come with their whole family to the vaccination venues and not feel alone,” Siti told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
By Wednesday, a total of 33.1 million people in the country had received their first dose, 14.4 million of whom had received the second dose as well.
