The vaccines, carried by a Boeing 777 owned by Dutch flag carrier KLM, arrived at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, on Monday afternoon.

Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said Indonesia had been actively participating in the multilateral effort since October of last year.

“These multilateral efforts have been starting to bear fruit since late February, when the cooperative effort kicked off its first deliveries of the vaccines. Today, Indonesia received the first shipment of 1.11 million ready-to-administer AstraZeneca vaccine doses,” she said during a press briefing on Monday.

The shipment that arrived in Jakarta on Monday, she added, was part of the first set of deliveries under the multilateral scheme. The country expected to receive 11.7 million doses in this first phase.

“The delivery of this first batch will be carried out until May. Hopefully, it will be followed by the next batches, according to the plan,” the minister said.

Indonesia is the third Southeast Asian country to have received vaccines under the scheme. Cambodia became the first on Wednesday, with a shipment of some 300,000 doses. The Philippines followed on Friday, receiving about 500,000 doses.

Navaratnasamy Paranietharan, the World Health Organization’s representative in Indonesia, said the shipment was part of an ambitious global goal of assisting all countries that had started their national vaccination programs within the first 100 days of 2021.

“Indonesia has already taken decisive action to initiate a COVID-19 vaccination program. It is one of the very few developing countries that has started vaccinations. That shows the exemplary leadership at the national level to make such a bold decision and move forward with it,” he said.

Paranietharan expressed hope that the 1.11 million vaccine doses would strengthen the national vaccination program.

The Indonesian Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use on Feb. 22, according to the agency’s website. This was corroborated by state-owned pharmaceutical firm Bio Farma spokesman Bambang Heriyanto. The agency, however, has yet to issue a fact sheet detailing eligibility requirements, such as age.

AstraZeneca has reported that the vaccine’s efficacy is 76 percent after a first dose, with “protection maintained to the second dose”. If administered 12 weeks or more after the first dose, the second shot can increase the vaccine’s efficacy to 82 percent, according to the company.

In addition to reducing asymptomatic transmission of the virus, the AstraZeneca vaccine appears to be more than 80 percent effective at preventing severe illness among the elderly, according to preliminary research published on Wednesday, AFP reported.

Indonesia started its national vaccination program in January with CoronaVac, produced by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech Ltd. Since December 2020, the country has received 38 million doses of the vaccine.

As of Monday, some 3 million people, about 1.1 percent of the country’s population, had received a first vaccine dose, according to the Health Ministry, and some 1.1 million of those people had also received their second shot. 

The COVAX facility is a global scheme to help countries buy and equitably distribute COVID-19 vaccines. It is led by the WHO, the GAVI vaccine alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

Indonesia is one of 92 nations listed in the GAVI COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC), a means of financing the participation of low- and middle-income economies in the COVAX facility. 

Minister Retno is one of three cochairs of the GAVI COVAX AMC Engagement Group, alongside Ethiopian Health Minister Lia Tadesse and Canadian Minister of International Development Karina Gould.

The initiative aims to fairly distribute 2 billion vaccine doses by the end of 2021. However, it faces challenges as many developed economies continue to hoard vaccines, having signed pre-purchase agreements with manufacturers.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the world’s vaccination situation as “wildly uneven and unfair”, with 10 countries having administered 75 percent of all COVID-19 vaccines.  

“Meanwhile, more than 130 countries have not received a single dose,” he said in February.

The United States, China and the European Union are leading the global vaccination tally, having administered 90.35 million, 52.52 million and 40.53 million doses respectively, according to Our World in Data, which tracks global COVID-19 vaccination programs.

UNICEF Indonesia representative Debora Comini said the shipment was made possible by the support of various donors, including some developed economies. She added that the UN body was ready to provide technical support for the Indonesian government, including cold chain infrastructure and vaccine transportation.

“We are also working together to make sure that the pandemic can be beaten as soon as possible and children can go back to a normal life,” she said.

— Ardila Syakriah contributed to the story

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