80 Million People Are Predicted For Homecoming, Booster Vaccine Is An Effort To Increase Protection

JAKARTA - Spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, said that the intensified COVID-19 vaccination was one of the efforts to increase protection when a large number of residents homecoming for Eid.

Nadia in the Dialectic Discussion of Democracy with the theme "Booster Ballads and Lebaran Homecoming" in Jakarta, Thursday, April 7, said that it must be understood that booster vaccination is not something that is a hassle for travelers.

"Actually, this 'booster' (booster vaccination) is one of our efforts to increase protection, because we know, as previously stated, the number who will be homecoming is very large, right," she said as quoted by Antara.

It is estimated that more than 80 million Indonesians will go home for Eid. She said with such a large number of people moving around, the risk of transmitting COVID-19 would increase.

"Well, because the risk is increasing, that's why we also add immune protection to our bodies, to be able to improve our ability later to face the risks of increasing the rate of transmission that occurs," she said.

She said that during the homecoming activity, there would be a group of elderly people, people with comorbidities, as well as children under the age of six who were going home. A total of three vulnerable groups must be protected from the start with vaccination.

"Actually, why then did the government take a policy of 'booster', which is something we do before homecoming? It's part of maintaining our health," she said.

Nadia explained that there was an increasing trend of booster vaccination, which was previously around 300-400 thousand people, now injections per day for the third dose are around 700-760 thousand people, especially in areas where there are indeed many homecomers.

The number who have received the third dose to date has reached 26.8 million people.