Ministry Of Health: Vaccination Decreasing As Conditions Improve

JAKARTA - Spokesperson for the COVID-19 Vaccination of the Indonesian Ministry of Health (Kemenkes), Siti Nadia Tarmizi said the number of COVID-19 vaccinations currently experiencing a decline may be due to the increasingly better and controlled transmission conditions in Indonesia.

"If we look at the decline in vaccination, maybe the factor is because the condition of transmission is getting better," Nadia said in the Main Wednesday Dialogue entitled Cases of Decline in Acceleration of Vaccination Continued, quoted by Antara, Wednesday, December 1.

Nadia explained that the decline in the number of people vaccinating was also because people were no longer in a hurry to get vaccines, so they tended to wait or choose certain types of vaccines.

Based on data held by the Ministry of Health, people who have received the first dose to date have reached 138 million or 67 percent. While those who received the second dose were 95.5 million or 45.8 percent.

However, of all the existing targets over the age of 12 years, the elderly population (elderly) vaccination only reached 53 percent of the total elderly who received the first dose of vaccination and 34 percent of the second dose.

"On the other hand, if we look at the regions, for almost two, three weeks there has been a decrease in injections per day, yes, this is because many regions are waiting to be able to get the Sinovac vaccine," she said.

According to Nadia, when viewed from the map of providing COVID-19 vaccines in the first semester, Indonesia used a lot of Sinovac vaccines, because other types of vaccines could not fully supply the needs of the community at that time. However, in the second half, Indonesia will have more types of vaccines besides Sinovac vaccines, such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Moderna.

With the development of vaccine types, he hopes that all regencies and cities can complete the acceleration of vaccination by using any vaccine provided by the government.

"In fact, we know that all vaccines are equally good and even if side effects occur, it's actually something normal, yes, as a reaction from our bodies once we are trained by vaccines to then stimulate our immune system," said Nadia.