VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

A Yogyakarta city resident receives a shot. (HO-Humas Pemkot Yogyakarta)

Some 45 thousand senior citizens of Yogyakarta Province have registered to receive COVID-19 vaccine jabs, according to the province's COVID-19 task force.

"We have yet to check whether the registrants reside in Yogyakarta or in the outskirts of the city," the task force's head, Heroe Poerwadi, stated here on Saturday.

They might have received assistance to fill up the online registration forms available on the Yogyakarta Health Office's official website by local government officials, he remarked.

Officials at neighborhood and community units in the city are among those assisting the elderly residents to get registered, Poerwadi noted.

Some 29 thousand of the 45 thousand registrants will get inoculated on April 5, while 7,775 elderly residents in Yogyakarta have received the first shots since March 8.

Some 28 others had received the first and second shots. Recipients of the first shots are required to wait for 28 days before getting the second jab, Poerwadi remarked.Some 13 hospitals around Yogyakarta are serving the COVID-19 recipients. The government's data shows that the city has some 46 thousand senior citizens.

Early this month, President Joko Widodo had paid a visit to Yogyakarta to observe the implementation of the government's national vaccination program in the city.

Some 19,900 people, including traders, shop owners, shopkeepers, and workers in Beringharjo Market, Malioboro Street area, Yogyakarta, were inoculated on March 1, 2021.

President Joko Widodo is upbeat about a recovery in the tourism and economic activities in Yogyakarta following the implementation of the COVID-19 vaccination program.

Indonesia has been striving to win the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic since the government officially announced the country's first confirmed cases on March 2, 2020.

The government has rolled out a nationwide vaccination program this year to contain the spread of infections.The Health Ministry estimates that the vaccination of some 181.5 million people under the national program will take 15 months.

Indonesia's COVID-19 infection rate crossed one million cases on January 26, 2021.

To attain herd immunity and free the nation from the clutches of the pandemic, Vice President Ma'ruf Amin has stressed on the need for successfully administering the COVID-19 vaccine to the targeted population.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease has dragged Indonesia into serious public health and economic crises//ANT