Task Force: Vaccine Booster Is Useless If Group Immunity Has Not Been Formed

ILLUSTRATION BETWEEN

JAKARTA - Head of the Data and IT Division of the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, Dr. Dewi Nur Aisyah emphasized that the use of a booster vaccine or a third dose of booster vaccine would be useless if group immunity had not yet been established.

Dewi emphasized that the benefits of vaccination are not only for oneself but also to form group immunity in the community so that there will be no more transmission of COVID-19 in the community.

Therefore, according to him, the third dose of booster vaccine will be useless to people who have received the second dose of vaccination if the coverage of the second dose of immunization has not reached 80 percent of the population as a condition for group immunity.

Dewi said that the government is currently only prioritizing booster vaccines for high-risk people such as health workers.

"The booster policy is still those who are at high risk for health workers. Our two doses of homework still have to be pursued first," Dewi said at an online press conference on the Analysis of the 3rd Wave of COVID-19 in Indonesia.

He explained that so far the current vaccine still has effectiveness to prevent transmission of new variants such as Delta. However, the Omicron variant is still waiting for the results of the study from the researchers.

Dewi said that currently vaccination coverage in Indonesia has reached 66.52 percent of the target, and the second vaccine has reached 45.30 percent nationally.

However, when viewed from each existing province, only five provinces have vaccination coverage above 50 percent, namely DKI Jakarta, Bali, Yogyakarta, Riau Islands, and Bangka Belitung.

"This means that there are still 29 provinces that are still vulnerable if exposed to the virus, it can still spread because the vaccination coverage is still below 50 percent," he said.

Meanwhile, based on the group that was vaccinated, more than 100 percent of the health workers and public officials had been vaccinated. However, what needs to be increased again are the vaccinations for teenagers who reach 53 percent of the second dose, and the elderly who have only 33 percent of the second dose of vaccination.