Jokowi Asks For COVID-19 Vaccination For A Year, Minister Of Health: We Will Try Hard

Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin (ANTARA)

JAKARTA - Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin confirmed that he would work hard to get a national vaccination program to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in a year.

Although initially said that the vaccination program would be completed within 15 months, the Ministry of Health was still trying to complete it within a year as requested by President Joko Widodo.

"We plan that within 15 months we will be able to complete the vaccination of 181 million Indonesians. However, earlier, Mr. President gave a challenge whether it could be accelerated so that it could be completed within 12 months. We will try hard and we need support to do this. "Budi said in a press conference broadcast on the YouTube account of the Presidential Secretariat after a closed meeting, Wednesday, January 6.

Budi explained that currently 1.2 million doses of Sinovac vaccine from China have been distributed to 34 provinces in Indonesia. This delivery, he said, had been carried out since last Sunday, January 3 and is targeted to be completed by January 7 at the latest.

Later, after the Food and Drug Supervisory Agency (BPOM) issues an emergency use authorization (UEA), vaccinations can be given.

To make the vaccination program a success, Minister of Health Budi reminded health facilities that will carry out vaccinations such as health centers, hospitals and clinics to immediately register with the PCare application belonging to BPJS Kesehatan. This needs to be done so that these health facilities can access vaccine recipient data.

"Because if they have not registered it will be difficult for them to be able to serve vaccinations, especially to record and handle if there are follow-up events after immunization (AEFI)," he said.

Not only that, he also appealed to puskesmas that still lacked refrigerators to immediately report it to related parties including the local health office so that this problem was resolved. "Please contact the Ministry of Health, the closest apparatus. If necessary (reports, red) can be sent to Twitter with my Instagram or my Facebook so we can handle it quickly," he said.

According to him, the problem related to the storage of the COVID-19 vaccine needs to be resolved immediately. Given, after the first phase of the vaccine against 1.6 million health workers is completed in January and February, it will proceed to the next stage.

"The next stage is bigger, namely the stage for 17.4 million public service personnel and 21.5 million people with elderly people, which we hope we can start in March or April 2021," said Minister of Health Budi.

"For that we really need these two things. We ask all hospitals, all clinics, and health centers to register with the BPJS Pcare and also to notify that, for example, there is a lack of a refrigerator or vaccine storage area with a certain temperature," he concluded.