VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Feb. 12 - The number of Indonesian healthcare workers who have received COVID-19 vaccine shots so far has reached 1,017,186, according to data provided by the COVID-19 Handling Task Force on Thursday afternoon.

The number of workers vaccinated against COVID-19 increased by 47,640 on Thursday compared to the previous day, it reported.

Of the 1,017,186 people who have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, 345,605 people have been administered their second dose, an increase of 66,354 people compared to Wednesday (February 10, 2021), according to the task force.

In its initial stage, the vaccination program is targeting a total of 1,468,764 healthcare workers.

The government has set a target of inoculating 181,554,464 people, or 70 percent of the total population of Indonesia, with the aim of building herd immunity against the coronavirus.

The next priority targets of the vaccination program are public service officers, including police and military personnel.

Each person covered by the vaccine program requires to be administered two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. This means that Indonesia needs 362 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for 181 million people.

To speed up the vaccination process, the Ministry of Health is collaborating with the TNI (Indonesian Defense Forces) and Polri (Indonesian Police) to carry out vaccinations and contact-tracing.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin has highlighted the dual strategies of surveillance and vaccination applied by his ministry to win the battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

"The first strategy is surveillance. How we know where the enemy is and where they are moving. In the past, they tracked them using interrogation techniques, but now, they employ testing and tracing techniques," Sadikin explained here on Thursday.

Based on the Health Ministry's computations, 30 tracers per 100 thousand people are required for the tracing process, and they need to be deployed in every village. Hence, Indonesia needs a total of 80 thousand tracers to meet its target of vaccinating around 181 million people.

"For Indonesia’s population, approximately 80 thousand tracers are required across all villages. We do not have such apparatus, and only the Police and the TNI have it," Sadikin pointed out. (Antaranews)