VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesia has become the fifth country globally to vaccinate more than 100 million citizens, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin has said. "Currently, more than 163 million vaccine doses have been administered. More than 100 million citizens have received the first dose vaccination and more than 50 million have received the second dose," Sadikin said at a press conference on public activity restrictions (PPKM) monitored online here, Monday.

This achievement had positioned Indonesia as the fifth country to administer COVID-19 vaccination to more than 100 million citizens, he revealed.

In addition, he said the national vaccination program had reached a pace of vaccinating two million people a day as previously recorded on September 23 and September 25. Therefore, it is hoped that the country can continue to surpass two million vaccine doses administered per day.

As of now, the number of vaccine doses the country has received is 226 million. Of the total, 205 million doses have been distributed to regions across the country, according to him.

Five million vaccine doses are about to arrive in Indonesia, and 160 million doses have been used to vaccinate the target recipients, he added.

"Therefore, within the next two or three days, there will still be 53 million vaccine doses available in 34 provinces which should be enough for us to expedite the vaccinations," he said.

On this occasion, Minister Sadikin also addressed the changing dynamics of the COVID-19 vaccine supply, stating that the country will likely only receive 20 million Novavax vaccine doses this year from the initial plan to supply 50 million.

Indonesia confirmed its first case of COVID-19 in March 2020, and to curb virus transmissions, the Indonesian government launched a nationwide vaccination program on January 13, 2021. (Antaranews)