VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

President Joko Widodo, Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto and Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo observed the vaccination of inter-faith figures at Central Java Grand Mosque in Semarang, Central Java(ANTARA/HO- Humas Pemprov Jateng)

Micro-scale Public Activity Restrictions (PPKM) and the national vaccination program are the key to containing the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia, Coordinating Economic Affairs Minister Airlangga Hartarto stated.

"The declining curve of national active cases, both in terms of the number and percentage, as well as the increasing number of recoveries are the positive outcomes of the implementation of micro-scale PPKM in the past 10 weeks," Hartarto noted in an official statement released on Saturday.

As of March 25, 2021, Indonesia had registered 1,482,559 COVID-19 cases, with a positivity rate of 11.49 percent and the number of national active cases at 8.45 percent, far below the global active cases at 17.06 percent.

The nation’s fatality rate was recorded at 2.7 percent and recovery rate at 88.85 percent. The global fatality rate was recorded at 2.2 percent and recovery rate at 8074 percent.The implementation of PPKM was expanded to the five provinces of South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara, and West Nusa Tenggara from March 23 to April 5.

"Looking ahead, it (the implementation of micro PPKM) will surely be stepped up and its criteria will be further tightened in accordance with the directives of President Joko Widodo. In addition, micro-scale PPKM will be expanded to five provinces after April 5 based on the existing data," he noted.

In the meantime, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin remarked that the number of Indonesian COVID-19 vaccine recipients would soon reach 10 million. The number of people inoculated against COVID-19 has currently reached 500 thousand per day.

The minister noted that 15 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine will be available from the end of March to April 2021.Based on the pandemic analysis using regression in the past three weeks, 77,193,705 doses of vaccine will be administered until the end of June 2021, while the total vaccine supplies being projected to reach 92,734,971 doses, he remarked.

The Sinopharm vaccine could be administered under the self-funded vaccination program in April 2021, and the health minister will soon issue a regulation on technical guidance for the use of the vaccine.

The government had earlier extended the micro-scale PPKM from March 23 through April 5 and expanded its implementation to five provinces: South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara, and West Nusa Tenggara.

"The implementation of micro-scale PPKM was expanded from March 23 to April 5 to the areas of South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara, and West Nusa Tenggara," Hartarto affirmed.The 10 provinces of North Sumatra, Banten, West Java, Jakarta, Central Java, East Java, Yogyakarta, Bali, East Kalimantan, and South Sulawesi already enforce the PPKM//ANT