VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

A screen grab of Minister of Foreign Affairs, Retno Marsudi, at the press conference held online regarding the arrival of the third batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine under the COVAX facility multilateral scheme. ANTARA/Rangga Pandu Asmara Jingga - 

Indonesia received the third batch of ready-to-use COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca, under the COVAX facility multilateral scheme, at the Soekarno-Hatta international airport in Tangerang on Saturday.

“Today, we need to be grateful that Indonesia is able to receive again the third batch of the vaccine under the COVAX facility multilateral scheme,” Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi stated during an online press conference here on Saturday.

Marsudi confirmed the arrival of 1,3,389,600 doses of the ready-to-use vaccine on Saturday.

Earlier, on Thursday (May 6), as many as 55,300 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine also arrived here.

“Overall, a total of 1,444,900 doses of the ready-to-use AstraZeneca vaccine of the third batch reached by this week under the COVAX facility scheme,” she noted.

The minister stated that 6,410,500 doses of the ready-to-use AstraZeneca vaccine, under the multilateral scheme, had arrived in Indonesia.Collectively, the number of vaccine doses received by Indonesia, so far, has reached 75,910,500.

Of the total doses of vaccines, 68,500,000 were from Sinovac, 6,410,500 were from AstraZeneca under the COVAX facility, and one million were from Sinopharm.

Marsudi highlighted that Indonesia was sentient of the fact that upholding the commitment to providing equal access to vaccination for all nations was no easy task.

The COVAX facility, supported by GAVI, WHO, and CEPI and in cooperation with UNICEF, has made unwavering attempts to provide vaccine equally to all countries, according to the minister.

“I laud the efforts. Since the start of the pandemic, Indonesia has consistently voiced for equal access to the vaccine for all. Indonesia also supports the COVID-19 patent deletion to boost the capacity of vaccine productivity globally,” she highlighted.

On May 17, 2021, the Indonesian foreign affairs minister, along with the Ethiopian health minister and Canadian international development minister, will chair the meeting of the COVAX AMC Engagement Group.

The meeting is aimed at discussing the current situations pertaining to the attempts to ensuring equitable vaccine access for all countries//ANT