Indonesia Received 5 Million Sinovac Vaccines And 1 Million AstraZeneca

ILLUSTRATION/UNSPLASH

JAKARTA - The Indonesian government has again received 5 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine and 1,086,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the 43rd and 44th stages today.

The COVID-19 spokesman from PT Bio Farma, Bambang Heriyanto, said that the vaccine that arrived at Soekarno Hatta Airport was carried out through a direct purchase route.

"With the presence of the two vaccines, it means that Indonesia has received 208.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine", said Bambang in his statement, Friday, August 27.

Bambang said that the government continues to try to bring in vaccines to secure stocks so that the needs of each region to carry out vaccinations are still met.

He said the vaccines that had been distributed were 123,256,044. Of these, 3 million doses of the Sinovac (CoronaVac) vaccine were distributed, Bio Farma's COVID-19 vaccine was 89,366,140 doses, AstraZeneca 15,982,584 doses.

Then, Moderna has been distributed as many as 7,558,810 doses, CoronaVac 2 doses of 6,848,644 doses, and Sinopharm from a grant of 499,866 doses. The total vaccine distributed during the period 1 to 26 August 2021 reached 36,631,654 doses.

"Bio Farma will always continue to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to locations that need it by directions from the Ministry of Health", said Bambang.

Meanwhile, an immunization expert, Elizabeth Jane Soepardi said that the vaccination target to achieve communal immunity and control the pandemic is 70 percent of the population who have been vaccinated.

"Currently Indonesia has only reached 21 percent. Of course, countries with a smaller population than Indonesia can more easily approach 70 percent", she said.

To break the chain of virus transmission amid limited vaccine stocks, local governments are expected to prioritize areas with the most COVID-19 cases. Generally, most cases occur in areas that are more densely populated and have high mobility.

"In this way, automatic immunization coverage will increase faster than vaccines that are evenly distributed", explained Jane.