Photographer: Anadolu / Getty Images Agency
Photographer: Anadolu / Getty Images Agency
President Joko Widodo is due to be vaccinated against coronavirus on January 13, which would kick off Indonesia’s inoculation program.
Jokowi, as he is commonly known, will receive the shots along with representatives of the public and the army as a way to build confidence in the vaccine, said Heru Budi Hartono, head of the presidential secretariat. The event will be televised for people to witness, he added.
China is fighting for the world to trust its vaccines
Indonesia is trying to start the vaccination program as soon as possible, as it is fighting the largest outbreak of coronavirus in Southeast Asia, with more than 770,000 confirmed cases so far.
In China Sinovac Biotech Ltd. has delivered 3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to the country. Now, the government is waiting for the local food and medicine regulator to issue an emergency use permit for the shootings to begin inoculating its population, with the aim of reaching 181.5 million people by March 2022. Jokowi asked the cabinet to further shorten this chronology. .
Even before the approval of the regulator, the government began distributing vaccines to its 34 provinces, spread across the largest archipelago in the world.
(Updates with more details throughout.)