High Public Interest, South Sumatra Asks For Additional COVID-19 Vaccines

JAKARTA - The South Sumatra Provincial Government requested an additional 150,000 vials of vaccine from the central government to complete the COVID-19 vaccination target before the end of 2021.

The Governor of South Sumatra, Herman Deru, said that the request was also to respond to the public's interest in being vaccinated for the formation of group immunity in an effort to fight the corona virus infection.

"The interest is high, but the availability of vaccines is not supported," said Herman Deru as quoted by Antara, Thursday, July 29.

Currently, the vaccine ration for South Sumatra given by the central government is 36 thousand vials or up to 360 thousand doses per month.

While the latest conditions are currently, some people who were previously reluctant to be vaccinated now want to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Problems also arise, because the availability of vaccines cannot meet the wishes of the community.

In fact, vaccinators and field workers to health facilities in villages have been well prepared to vaccinate residents.

If the distribution of the vaccine is 36 thousand vials per month, the vaccination target for the entire community will take more than two years. In fact, the distribution of the vaccine in the fourth week has not yet been received, said Herman Deru.

He asked the central government to increase the vaccine quota in South Sumatra, and distribute the vaccine proportionally to all regions in the country.

While waiting for the supply of vaccines, the Provincial Government of South Sumatra utilized the remaining emergency vaccine stock of 643 vials or 6,430 doses in the vaccine warehouse of the Health Office to continue the vaccination scheme.

Head of the South Sumatra Provincial Health Office, Lesty Nurainy, in Palembang, Thursday, said the vaccine was a backup vaccine that was set aside from receiving shipments from the central government.

Since the first quarter of 2021, a total of 1,635,330 doses of vaccines have been received and then distributed evenly according to the number of vaccine needs in each of the 17 regencies and cities with a total of 1,628,900 doses.

Of the number of vaccines, it was recorded that 948,632 people had completed the vaccination scheme for two injections (two doses) or only 14.7 percent of the total target population of 6.4 million people targeted for vaccination.

Each vaccination target is classified into several groups, namely, 98 percent of health human resources (HR), and 13.17 percent of the elderly, and more than 100 percent of the essential public service community.

Meanwhile, for students or adolescents aged 12-18 years, there were 1,661 people or 0.2 percent of the target 846,683 people and the general public who were classified as vulnerable, 183,232 or 4.18 percent had just carried out the first dose of vaccination.

Meanwhile, South Sumatra continues to struggle in handling COVID-19 along with the increase in positive cases in the past month. The increase is quite drastic from an average of 700 cases per day on 27 July 2021 to 1,249 cases on Wednesday, 28 July.

So far, South Sumatra has activated several towers at the Wisma Atlet Jakabaring Sport City (JSC) and the Palembang Hajj Dormitory as places of isolation. In addition, South Sumatra also established a free oxygen filling post for the people of South Sumatra.