VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin has said the government is targeting to administer 50 million COVID-19 vaccine doses per month from September this year to meet the national vaccination target by January 2022.

“We did plan to complete vaccinations in a year. The President had initially asked to finish it in 15 months, but it was revised into 12 months,” he stated during an online press conference here on Tuesday.

After launching vaccinations on January 13, 2021, the government had set the target of administering 426 million doses by January 2022, he informed.

Vaccinations have reached just 50 million doses per month as of July 8, 2021, he added.

“So, from when we started in January until completing the inoculation of first 50 million doses as of July 2021, it required 26 weeks,” he noted.

The ministry is making efforts to administer the next 50 million vaccine doses by August 31, 2021, according to Sadikin.

“So, the first 50 million doses ran for 26 weeks, the next 50 million doses in seven weeks (ending August 31), and we are keen on meeting the target of 50 million doses to be accomplished in six weeks, hopefully in four weeks,” he said.

If the administration of 50 million doses requires four weeks in a month, the target of 1.3-1.4 million doses per day can be met, he pointed out.

“But if we can complete the 50 million doses of vaccine in four weeks, meanwhile, we have targeted 100 million doses in August and we have four months of September, October, November, December. If in those four months, we can achieve 50 million doses per month on average, we can obtain as many as 200 millions of additional doses,” he expounded.

If the strategy can be applied, 300 million doses, or 70 percent of the total 426 million doses, can be administered by the end of 2021, he said.

“If we see the rate of the first 50 million doses to be completed in 26 weeks, the next 50 million doses are targeted to be finished in seven weeks. We will see in September whether we can increase from 100 million to 200 million of doses,” he remarked. (Antaranews)