Vaccination Dose 2 Reaches 70.38 Percent Of Targets

ILLUSTRATION OF DOCK BETWEEN

JAKARTA - Spokesperson for the COVID-19 Vaccination of the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) Siti Nadia Tarmizi said the coverage of the second dose of COVID-19 vaccine currently reaches 70.38 percent or 146,577,204 doses of the target of 208,265,720 residents.

"The achievement of dose 2 vaccination is important in efforts to handle and prevent the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. However, our journey has not ended here," said Nadia in a written statement quoted on Saturday, March 5.

"Our target is to be able to reach 70 percent of the total population of Indonesia, plus booster vaccinations which are now also open to the public and can be done after 3 months from primary vaccination doses 1 and 2," he added.

Nadia said the COVID-19 vaccination was important for the elderly, with comorbidities, and children. Moreover, this group is prone to severe symptoms when tested positive.

"The effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccination is still high to prevent patients with severe symptoms from dying from COVID-19," he said.

Nadia explained that from January 21-February 26, 5,013 COVID-19 patients who died were dominated by those who had not yet received complete vaccinations. The total percentage reached 69 percent.

Even so, he revealed that currently the indicators of handling COVID-19 continue to improve. This can be seen from the decline in daily confirmed cases which on Friday, March 4 stood at 26,347.

In addition, active cases also fell by 14,443 to 517,253 after yesterday at 531,696. "Currently we are still trying to control the pandemic by consistently reducing the number of cases, the positivity rate, to fatalities nationally," Nadia explained.

"There have been 15 provinces that have consistently shown a decrease in the number of daily cases and 8 provinces have shown a decline in the number of daily cases. This is a positive signal for the efforts that have been made together," he added.

Nadia asked the public to immediately get a complete dose of COVID-19 vaccine plus a booster.

"The Ministry of Health also continues to urge the public to be willing to cooperate in testing and tracing in order to narrow the scope of transmission of COVID-19. Tightening of health protocols still needs to be done collectively to help government programs," he concluded.