Warganet Wants To Move To Singapore For Free Vaccines, Task Force: We Make It Affordable To The Community

Illustration (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The Singapore government's decision to eliminate the COVID-19 vaccine for its citizens and foreign nationals who have lived for a long time in the Singaporean country has drawn many comments from netizens in Indonesia.

In fact, there are some netizens who joke that they want to move to become Singapore citizens. The only reason is to get free vaccines.

Responding to this, Wiku Adisasmito, spokesperson for the Task Force (Satgas) for handling COVID-19 then spoke up. He said, the government is currently trying to make future vaccination programs accessible to all levels of society without exception.

However, he did not elaborate on the efforts made by the government to ensure that this vaccine can be enjoyed by all groups even though it has to be paid later.

"The government is trying to make the vaccination program affordable for all levels of society," Wiku said when contacted by VOI, Tuesday, December 18.

It is known that the Indonesian government has prepared two schemes for the implementation of COVID-19 vaccination, namely the government program scheme and the independent scheme. For the procurement of the COVID-19 vaccine, the government program scheme is implemented by the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) and the independent scheme is implemented by the Ministry of BUMN. Of the immunization coverage target of 107 million people, 75 million are for the independent scheme target group, while 32 million are for the government program scheme.

Vaccination targets for government schemes are health workers in all health facilities, essential public servants and vulnerable groups of people. Meanwhile, the independent scheme includes other economic actors, namely BPJS participants, non-BPJS / other insurance, and public / private participants.

This independent scheme then raises the pros and cons. Because, in this scheme later, residents who want to get vaccines must spend from their own pockets.

Meanwhile, when compared to Singapore, the COVID-19 vaccine will be provided free of charge to all citizens and foreigners who have lived in the country for a long time, said Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday, December 14.

This vaccine will be prioritized for people most at risk of contracting COVID-19, including frontline health workers and the elderly. "After that, the committee proposed to gradually vaccinate the entire population, and include all people who want vaccinations by the end of next year," PM Lee was quoted as saying by The Straitstime.

According to Lee, the Singapore government has approved the use of the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech. He even said that he and his Cabinet colleagues would be vaccinated earlier. "This is to show you, especially seniors like me, that we believe the vaccine is safe."

Meanwhile, vaccine shipments are expected to arrive in Singapore at the end of this month and be followed in the following months.

Lee added that if all goes according to plan, Singapore will have enough vaccines for all citizens by the third quarter of 2021.

Still quoted by The Straitsstime, Singapore has set aside more than S $ 1 billion for vaccines and has paid early advances for the most promising vaccine candidates, including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sinovac. In the future this country has also made agreements with pharmaceutical companies to facilitate their clinical trials and drug development including vaccine development.