Minister Of Health Budi Hopes That All Indonesian People Will Be Vaccinated In April 2021

Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin. (Photo: Doc. BNPB)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Health ensures that the vaccination process will start tomorrow. In the first phase, the vaccine will be injected to all health workers in the country, with a total of 1.48 million people.

Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said that the first stage of vaccination must be given to health workers. This is because they are most likely to be exposed to the virus when treating positive patients with COVID-19.

"This stage can start tomorrow this Sunday, then rolling. Hopefully by the end of February this can be completed. All over the world, why is this stage given to health workers? Because the criteria are given to people who are at high risk of exposure," he said at a meeting. work with Commission IX DPR, Tuesday, January 12.

After the first phase is complete, said Budi, the next person who will get the vaccine injection is a public officer. Where, this public officer is a person whose daily duties meet many people.

"We will give it to 17.4 million public officers. Now this is somewhat different from many other countries, because most other countries put the elderly first and then public officials with the same reason. Not economic reasons, not political reasons, not social reasons but more to humanitarian reasons, "he said.

However, said Budi, the elderly were placed in number 2B. This means that this group will only get an injection of the COVID-19 vaccine after public officials have finished being vaccinated. The reason is because there is an age limit, which is only 59 years old. The target of the elderly who will receive the vaccine is 21.5 million people.

"In Indonesia, we put it in 2B, because the current vaccine that has Sinovac has only arrived in Indonesia until the age of 59 years. We hope that the Pfizer vaccine, AstraZeneca coming in April, is a vaccine that has already been tested in clinical trials for use in over 60 years. So we will start for public officials and the elderly around March-April, "he said.

The Minister of Agriculture, Deputy Minister for BUMN, said that if all priority stages have been completed, the government will begin mass vaccinating at the end of April.

"If for example it is completed, it is hoped that the end of April or early May we can vaccinate the whole community. The stages are roughly like that," he explained.