Ministry Of Health Asks Parents Not To Wait For Other Brand Vaccines For Children

ILLUSTRATION/BETWEEN

JAKARTA - Spokesperson for COVID-19 Vaccination at the Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, asked parents to immediately vaccinate their children aged 6-11 years with Sinovac vaccine that has received an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from BPOM.

Parents were also asked not to be picky until they waited for another vaccine brand to get the EUA for their children aged 6 to 11 years.

“We hope that when the vaccination program for children aged 6 to 11 years has started, parents will not have to hesitate. The most important thing is that you don't have to wait for other vaccine brands to get emergency vaccine permits," Nadia said in the talk show "Child Vaccines, Love Families" quoted by Antara, Monday, November 8.

Nadia said that vaccinating children aged 6 to 11 years old with COVID-19 is a community struggle to jointly get Indonesia out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Currently, the government has only provided EUA for Sinovac to vaccinate children aged 6 to 11 years. Going forward, he said the government might grant EUA for vaccines under other brands as some countries have done, but parents were asked not to delay vaccination for their children.

“In the United Arab Emirates, they use Sinofarm, while the United States Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of pfizer for children aged 3 to 11 years. This means that there are already several other vaccine candidates for children under 12 years of age," he said.

Nadia added that the government is targeting to vaccinate 26 million children aged 6 to 11 years with the Sinovac vaccine.

The vaccine dose received by the children will be the same as the dose received by adults so that the children will be injected with the vaccine twice with the first and second injections spanning 28 days. For this, the government will need around 50 million vaccines.