JAKARTA - Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said that the elderly (elderly) should be forced to immediately receive an injection of the COVID-19 vaccine to prevent further waves of transmission of the new corona virus.
"Vaccination must be accelerated, so that we are ready if for example we enter (the third wave, ed.) the immunity is already there, especially the priority is for the elderly over 60 years," said Minister of Health Budi in Jakarta, Wednesday, December 1.
He said, out of a total of more than 20 million elderly population in Indonesia, the COVID-19 vaccination coverage that has been achieved so far is only around 11 million people.
He said the elderly were the most vulnerable group when exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19, and were even at the greatest risk of being hospitalized for treatment.
"The mortality is also high," he said.
Budi admits that trying to persuade the elderly to want to be vaccinated requires a special strategy, one of which involves involving the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) and the National Police (Polri) to health workers.
"So please help my friends, it's difficult for the elderly to inject the injection. Sometimes the elderly whose children are doctors are also not sure they want the vaccine," he said. Budi said that efforts to increase vaccination coverage for the elderly needed coercion.
"It must be forced for the elderly as soon as possible, that's one of the strategies and we will push it through the TNI-Polri, maybe it will be a bit forced," he said.
Based on the experience of the continued wave of COVID-19 in Europe, said Budi, people who refuse vaccinations are one of the triggers for the explosion of cases in a number of countries.
"Because many people don't want to be vaccinated, they don't believe that the vaccine can protect them, as a result, they are prone to getting infected and even infecting other people," he said.
For this reason, Budi asked for assistance from the apparatus and health workers to help the government convince the public to get vaccinated quickly, especially the elderly.
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