VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

 Some 47.7 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were administered to Indonesians by July 6, with the daily dosage being increased to 1-2 million in August, Coordinating Economic Affairs Ministry's special staff, Raden Pardede, stated.

“In the attempts to stem the transmission of COVID-19 and to achieve herd immunity, we continue to accelerate vaccination that had touched one million and even 1.5 million on July 1. We have set the target of two million daily doses,” Pardede remarked during an online discussion here on Wednesday.

The government is striving to expedite the vaccination program in order to achieve the daily dosage target of 1-1.5 million by the end of July whilst maintaining to secure the vaccine supply, he noted.

According to the vaccination roadmap, the government has planned to increase the inoculated daily doses to 1.5 million by July, 1.5 million by August, 1.8 million by September, 1.8 up to three million by October, 2.8 million up to three million by November, and 2.5 million by December.

The roadmap was designed since the government is eyeing to achieve herd immunity among the residents of Greater Jakarta by the third quarter of 2022, in Java and Bali by the end of 2021, and all Indonesian regions by the first quarter of 2022.

Pardede cautioned that the emerging delta variant can infect as many as 117,649 people within 30 days of transmission and is deemed much more dangerous than the alpha variant that can infect 15,625 within a month and the Wuhan variant that can infect 729 people.

“This is a new, unprecedented viral mutation that we have never counted before. As part of the health handling efforts, we have enforced micro PPKM (public activity restriction) for regions outside of Java and Bali as well as emergency PPKM for Java and Bali,” he noted.

He remarked that the emergency PPKM in Java and Bali, covering 45 districts or towns, was enforced in a bid to curb the additional daily active cases to below 10 thousand and bed occupancy ratio to under 70 percent.

“It is to ensure that the health facilities and health workers are able to cope (with such conditions). If it is over 10,000, akin to what the condition is now, then the downstream end of the health sector cannot handle it,” he stressed. (Antaranews)