Jakarta
The government has high hopes for achieving herd immunity against COVID-19 through its ambitious vaccination plan, but experts say it might take years and wider inoculation coverage for that to happen, especially without sufficient containment efforts. Indonesia began its vaccination program on Wednesday using Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac vaccine, which would be used on the largest share — some 65 million — of the targeted 181.5 million Indonesians. The country has received 3 million ready-to-use doses of the vaccine and 15 million bulk doses and expects to receive another 107 million bulk doses produced by state-owned pharmaceutical firm Bio Farma gradually until next year. But how well the vaccine will help the country’s fight against COVID-19 has led to concerns over piecemeal information on the vaccine’s efficacy in trial settings. ...