VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Bambang Soesatyo wholly supports the government's effort to lobby several pharmaceutical firms of the world to meet the country's COVID-19 vaccine requirements.

Indonesia needs 350 million vaccine doses since each citizen should be administered two shots of the COVID-19 vaccine, Soesatyo noted in a statement released on Wednesday.

"The government's success to receive 270 million doses of vaccine from several countries to meet domestic needs is worthy of praise. However, with the Indonesian population of 268.5 million of which 70 percent must be vaccinated, the real minimum requirements for the COVID-19 vaccine will be 350 million doses," he stated.

The MPR supports the government's endeavor to address the shortage of COVID-19 vaccine, he affirmed.

It is not easy to meet the real minimum requirement for COVID-19 vaccine since all countries must compete with one another to get the much-sought medical product, he pointed out.

"With the global population of 7.8 billion, the world needs more than 15 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine, while the global production capacity is projected to reach 8.4 billion doses," he stated.

Nearly three billion doses of the total production capacity were ordered by developed nations, so the Indonesian government must strive to obtain the additional vaccine to meet the target, he emphasized.

While several countries have scheduled the vaccination of their citizens to end the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia must have the pluck to take a similar initiative to cater to minimum requirements for the COVID-19 vaccine, he noted.

Chief of the COVID-19 Task Force at the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, Daniel Tumpal, stated during a discussion here recently that Indonesia's free and active foreign policy had made it easy for the country to negotiate with other nations on the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines.

Indonesia has been able to freely conduct diplomacy for the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines, while several large countries are competing with one another for developing the vaccine, he noted.

“The free and active foreign policy is not a figment. For instance, where this vaccine is concerned, we have held talks with the United States, Britain, China, and so on. I don't see any problem. We are so comfortable to move everywhere,” he affirmed.

Indonesia secured the supply of COVID-19 vaccines from China and the United Arab Emirates after Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir paid visits to the countries in the middle of this year.

The procurement of COVID-19 vaccines has been one of the three points of refocus of the work priorities of the Foreign Ministry and Indonesian foreign representatives amid the pandemic, especially to help the government mitigate the outbreak through health diplomacy, Tumpal reiterated.

"In the short and the long run, the three issues -- diagnostic, therapeutic, and vaccine -- will mark our diplomacy in the health field," he remarked.

Indonesia has established cooperation with several countries, including China, South Korea, the UK, and the UAE, for developing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines. (Antaranews)