Immunity Prediction Will Lower Next Year, Ministry Of Health Want To Accelerate 100 Million Booster Recipients

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JAKARTA - The Ministry of Health is preparing a strategy to accelerate the coverage of booster doses of COVID-19 vaccination from 100 million participants starting in early 2023.

"My guess is, we will decrease immunity at the beginning of next year. We have to be prepared, don't let if there is another wave we get," said Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin, Jakarta, Thursday, September 15.

Budi said the Ministry of Health is preparing a strategy to accelerate COVID-19 vaccination to boost booster vaccines, which currently only range from 60 percent of the total target of 236.66 million people.

According to Budi, the strategy will target at least 100 million people access booster vaccines as an effort to prepare population immunity in the event of a follow-up wave. "The Ministry of Health is currently making another program, now there are only 60 million (booster vaccine recipients), we have prepared up to 100 million so that our follow-up pandemic is calm," he said, quoted from Antara.

Minister of Health Budi said Indonesia had prepared the production of domestic COVID-19 booster vaccines produced by PT Biotis (Inavic Vaccines) and PT Bio Farma (Indovac Vaccines).

"That's why when the booster comes out, we pursue it at the end of the year so that we can prepare people who have not been boosted by the third," he said.

Budi added that the pandemic situation in Indonesia is now relatively under control. This situation was proven when the Omicron Subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 triggered many new waves in the world, but in Indonesia that did not happen.