The country is prioritizing the vaccination of about 1.3 million medical workers and staff members from Jan. 14 to April of this year.

The Health Ministry sent a mass text message recently encouraging self-registration on certain digital platforms, including the Peduli Lindungi mobile application, website and call center, as well as online messaging application WhatsApp.

The Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) previously issued a decree appealing to all medical workers to participate in the vaccination program and to end controversies regarding the vaccine, its efficacy and its emergency approval.

But the chief stumbling block for medical workers has been the difficulty they have had enrolling in the program.

“We’re seeing many medical workers not yet registered on the information system provided. To be honest, there are many doctors who have had difficulties registering on the provided platforms,” IDI spokesperson Halik Malik told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday

Five days into the program on Tuesday, 483,000 health workers and supporting staff members had registered, and 41,300 of them had received the fi rst shot of the dual-dose CoronaVac developed by Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech, according to Health Ministry spokesperson Siti Nadia Tarmizi

President Joko “Jokowi’” Widodo has said that he wants 181.5 million people – out of the nation’s total 269 million – to be vaccinated by the end of 2021.

The current plan is to have 3 million people inoculated in January. The government is also hoping to inoculate 92.6 million people by June. So far, the country has received 3 million ready-to-use doses and 15 million bulk doses of the Sinovac vaccine

Read also: 'Long road' to herd immunity even with COVID-19 vaccination

The Health Ministry has worked with the Communications and Information Ministry to create an integrated database called One Vaccination Data, which contains a list of medical workers eligible for the program.

 

Medical workers can check if they are eligible by searching for their identity card number (NIK) on the platform.

If their data is not recorded, they can request inclusion by email or by communicating directly with local health agencies.

Eligible medical workers must undergo health screenings that will exclude those with comorbidities and those who are pregnant or lactating from a priority list of vaccine recipients. Only after this registration process can they choose a vaccination venue and receive the first dose. People with past COVID-19 infections are not prioritized under the current program

Read also: Hospital beds remain scarce as Indonesia rolls out vaccines

Linda Novia Munandar, 28, a doctor who has recently been deployed to Bangil, East Java, said she had been notified that she was eligible for the program, even though she was four months into her pregnancy and had contracted the virus in December.

After undergoing the requisite health screening, she was not allowed to register for vaccination because of her pregnancy and past COVID-19 infection.

“Some of my colleagues’ NIKs were not registered,” Linda said.

Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said he was aware of the data problem and that the problem might lie in the poorly integrated data sets that the ministry was managing.

A 49-year-old medical worker at a COVID-19 referral hospital in Sidoarjo, East Java, who requested anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the public said that she and her colleagues had to push back their inoculation a few days to Jan. 20 because of problems in the vaccine shipment.

She found that her age was incorrectly recorded, meaning the hospital had to report the error to the local health agency before she was able to log into the application.

Read also: Patients crowd hospitals as Indonesia loses 183 'priceless' medical workers

Another community health center (Puskesmas) doctor in Sidoarjo, East Java, who also wished to remain anonymous and who had been helping a janitor at the facility with the registration, found that a data mismatch was hindering the enrollment process.

“Peduli Lindungi said that his NIK and phone number didn’t match, even though he has no other phone numbers,” she said. Epidemiologist Dicky Budiman said the government should evaluate its data management and prepare for the subsequent, larger-scale phases of the vaccination drive.