JAKARTA - Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said that handling COVID-19 in the country cannot only rely on providing vaccines. This is because vaccines are not 'silver bullets' to kill COVID-19.
"With all humility, (vaccination, ed) is one of the strategies. (Vaccination, red) This is not a silver bullet for solving the COVID-19 problem”, Budi said in an online press conference broadcasted on the Ministry of Education and Culture's YouTube channel, Tuesday, March 30.
Thus, Budi hopes that all parties have a perception regarding this matter. Although vaccination is now the government's flagship program, other strategies should not be forgotten.
"Vaccination must be carried out in conjunction with health protocols with infrastructure readiness for good diagnostics and readiness if someone is sick", said the former Deputy Minister of BUMN.
After all, vaccination does not necessarily guarantee that someone is immune in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who are vaccinated, he continued, can also contract this virus even though their conditions are not as severe as those who have not been vaccinated.
This is because vaccine recipients will have antibodies compared to those who have not been injected with the COVID-19 vaccine.
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Furthermore, he also emphasized that the government has set a priority scale for those who receive the vaccine. One of them is health workers because they are in direct contact with COVID-19 patients.
"People who are at the highest risk are those who are given the first chance of vaccination", he said.
The government provides the first batch of vaccinations to 1.5 million health workers. Furthermore, the vaccine is injected into the elderly. "Because if the elderly are exposed, there is a 50 percent risk of dying. This is different from non-elderly people whose data is currently 2 percent on average", he said.
In addition, in the future, the Ministry of Health will also ask the Ministry of Education and Culture to local governments to prioritize teaching staff, including teachers. Moreover, teachers who enter as public officers are vulnerable to being exposed to this virus.
So, the Ministry of Education and Culture must pay more attention to vaccinating them. "We have to pay attention to these educators because they are a priority", said Budi.
"So we ask all schools, universities, local governments, let's help our educators by creating a joint injection school program. So, this will accelerate the acceleration until the end of June", he concluded.
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