2021 Projection: Looking To Health Protocol Violations Once Vaccines Are In Place

Illustration (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Early 2020 is a pretty dark story for all countries in the world, including Indonesia. The SARS COV2 virus or more popularly known as Corona and COVID-19 is spreading rapidly.

In Indonesia, until now, hundreds of thousands of people have been infected. In fact, thousands of them died due to the ferocity of the virus. The government did not remain silent, various steps to prevent the spread were carried out. One of them is implementing the large-scale social restrictions (PSBB).

In this regulation, all community activities are regulated in such a way. In fact, people who are wayward face criminal penalties by referring to the Health Quarantine Act.

The government's efforts do not stop there. The government is participating in a race with all countries in finding a vaccine or drug against COVID-19.

Until finally, Indonesia received a vaccine that was produced by Sinovac, a company from China. About 1.2 million doses of Sinovac vaccine were imported to the country, last December 6.

However, this vaccine was not distributed directly to the public. This is because the vaccine will be clinically tested by PT Bio Farma (Persero).

The President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo (Jokowi) said that this vaccine is good news and new hope in handling the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

"Today the government has received 1.2 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. This vaccine is made by Sinovac, which we have been testing clinically in Bandung since August 2020," Jokowi said some time ago.

In fact, the former Governor of DKI Jakarta said that the government is working on additional vaccines. It is estimated that as many as 1.8 million doses will arrive in early January 2021.

"Apart from the finished vaccine, this month there will be 15 million doses of vaccine and 30 million doses in January in the form of raw materials which will be further processed by Bio Farma," he said.

In fact, on December 31, the government brought back 1.8 million doses of Sinovac vaccine. In the plan, the vaccine will be distributed to all provinces in Indonesia in January 2021.

Minister of Health (Menkes) Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the distribution of vaccines would be evenly distributed. So that the vaccination program can be implemented immediately.

"We hope that before the Indonesian people return to work in January, God willing, we can distribute the vaccine to 34 provinces so that we can start the vaccination program for our health workers," said Budi.

He said President Jokowi had assigned his ranks of ministers to work hard to ensure that vaccinations could be carried out immediately and thoroughly. In fact, Budi said, this work no longer looks at holidays.

"On Tuesday we conveyed the plan to the public, last Wednesday Bio Farma signed an order agreement for 50 million vaccines from Astrazeneca and Novavax, both from England and America, and today we are witnessing the arrival of the second batch of Sinovac vaccines to Indonesia. "he said.

Even so, he still requested that the public adhere to health protocols to prevent transmission of the virus. This is because the vaccine, which is the main strategy in handling COVID-19, still needs a long preparation, even for the next year.

"It took more than 12 months for us to complete this vaccination program. For that, friends, don't forget to always adhere to health protocols," he said.

With this vaccine, it will certainly affect the handling of COVID-19 in Indonesia. But the influence will not be significant.

Griffith University epidemiologist, Dicky Budiman said, one of the factors is because the number of vaccines currently available is still small when compared to Indonesian people.

"With this initial vaccine, it is certainly not too significant," said Dicky.

So, the transmission of COVID-19 can still occur massively. Moreover, the potential for transmission occurs during the vaccination process. Because, later there will be a crowd.

For that, Dicky said that the government needs to pay attention to the vaccination process at the larger community level. This is done by establishing good communication with the community and continuing to promote the application of Tracing, Testing, Treatment.

"We have to prepare various things with 3T and 5M and also include increasing the potential coverage of the population who want to be vaccinated by means of improving our communication strategy," he said.

Then, Dicky also said that with a limited number of vaccines, the government should prioritize vaccination against groups that are vulnerable to exposure, for example medical personnel. Because, they are the parties who are often in direct contact with positive cases.

So, for medical personnel this vaccine can provide additional protection when dealing directly with COVID-19 cases. That way, their self-confidence will increase and it will also affect the handling of positive cases of COVID-19.

"This can increase protection," he said.

However, which becomes an important note. Although currently there is a vaccine, Dicky also appealed to the public to continue to implement health protocols. Because, this is the key to controlling COVID-19.

Meanwhile, the government also still has to strictly enforce all regulations related to health protocols. The reason is that these regulations are the main strategy in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

"If the isolation quarantine wants a vaccine, whether there is a vaccine or not, (still) it must be done because that is the main strategy if the state does not implement testing, tracing will cause an uncontrolled pandemic," he said.

Moreover, if you refer to the Ministry of Health's data, the level of transmission of COVID-19 is still very high at 15.1 percent. In fact, WHO issued a minimum rate of spread below 5 percent.

Likewise, Criminologist from the University of Indonesia Ferdinand Andi Lolo also said that the implementation of health protocol rules must be carried out until COVID-19 completely disappears. This is because there is no guarantee that someone who has been vaccinated will not be infected again.

"Obviously it is necessary. As long as there is still a health emergency situation, the relevant regulations are absolutely applicable," said Ferdinand.

The implementation of health protocols, said Ferdinand, is an absolute thing that must be done. The reason is that if you reflect on the violations in 2020, there are still many people who don't seem to care about the spread of COVID-19.

For this reason, the implementation of regulations regarding health protocols with the existence of sanctions still needs to be enforced. The goal is for the community to comply so that the transmission of COVID-19 can be controlled.

"Actually, it is more about enforcing awareness on the public, the threat of corporal and financial punishment can force people to comply," he said.

Meanwhile, if there is a vaccine and the government does not apply health protocol rules, Ferdinand said the transmission of COVID-19 will actually get out of control. There are several factors behind this, one of which is that people still don't believe in vaccines.

"If left to one's own awareness, public awareness is very low because they don't know, don't care and are consumed by hoaxes that Covid is not real or dangerous," he said.