Photographer: Agência Anadolu / Getty Images
Photographer: Agência Anadolu / Getty Images
President Joko Widodo is due to be vaccinated against coronavirus on January 13, which would start Indonesia’s vaccination program.
Jokowi, as he is commonly known, will receive the vaccines along with representatives of the public and the army as a way to increase confidence in the vaccine, said Heru Budi Hartono, head of the presidential secretariat. The event will be televised for people to testify, he added.
China is struggling to make the world trust its vaccines
Indonesia is trying to start the vaccination program as soon as possible, as it faces the largest coronavirus outbreak in Southeast Asia, with more than 770,000 confirmed cases so far.
From China Sinovac Biotech Ltd. shipped 3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to the country. Now, the government expects the local food and drug regulator to issue emergency use authorization so that vaccines begin to inoculate its population, with a target of reaching 181.5 million people by March 2022. Jokowi asked the cabinet to shorten that period even further.
Even before the regulator’s approval, the government started distributing vaccines to its 34 provinces spread across the world’s largest archipelago.
(Updates with more details everywhere.)