Coordinating Minister Airlangga Asks For Mandatory Banking Levels For Employees To Join Booster Vaccines

JAKARTA - The Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Airlangga Hartarto, asked all high-ranking national banking officials to require their employees to undergo a third dose of vaccination (booster).

This is to deal with the latest COVID-19 pandemic situation.

"The booster vaccine must be encouraged and in front of the bank director, booster vaccines are mandatory for all employees. So that we can take advantage of having a lot of vaccines", said Airlangga in a face-to-face event with the president director in the financial services sector, Thursday, July 7.

According to him, the current economic recovery has increased demand rapidly so that demand for goods and services has soared in various countries.

However, in its development, there was a new disruption, namely the spread of new variants of COVID-19 such as the spread of the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants.

"The world calls this the perfect storm, namely COVID-19 which is not over yet", said Airlangga.

He detailed that in various countries such as America the number of cases of Covid is still relatively high because it is still at the 100,000 mark.

While in England and France it is still at 90,000.

"For neighboring Singapore, 8000 have been completed and Indonesia itself has reached 1800", Airlangga added.

Previously, Airlanga, who was also the Chair of the Committee for Handling COVID-19 and National Economic Recovery (KPCPEN), admitted that the government had extended the implementation of restrictions on community activities (PPKM) outside Java-Bali from July 5 to August 1, 2022.

This decision was taken in a limited meeting of PPKM evaluations chaired directly by President Joko Widodo, Monday, July 4.

Airlangga admitted that the effective reproduction rate for COVID-19 outside Java-Bali was at 1.11 for Nusa Tenggara, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi.

Meanwhile, the effective reproduction rate for COVID-19 in Sumatra is 1.08, and 0.99 for Maluku and Papua.

Airlangga added, that Java-Bali still represents the majority or 95 percent of the national daily cases as of July 3.

"In terms of national cases 1,614, Java-Bali still represents the majority or 95 percent, namely 1,579 cases, while outside Java-Bali 35 cases or 4.07 percent", he said in a statement, Monday.

On average, Indonesia's 7-day moving average COVID-19 cases were relatively lower than some countries in the world.

"This means that the handling of COVID-19 in Indonesia so far is still better than other countries in the world", he concluded.