TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian government has received an addition of 313,100 doses of COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca, stated spokesperson for COVID-19 Vaccination, Siti Nadia Tarmizi.

The vaccine arrived at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang City, Banten Province, on Saturday at 18:00 p.m. local time, she said when contacted on Sunday,

With the addition of 313,100 doses, Indonesia has received a total of 92.2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, both in ready-to use and bulk forms.

"The arrival of AstraZeneca vaccine from the Covax Facility is the result of the hard work of the Indonesian Government, which since October 2020 has been seeking multilateral cooperation for COVID-19 Covax, a global initiative aimed at gaining equal access to the COVID-19 vaccine," she said.

"Through the GAVI Covax Advance Market Commitment mechanism, Indonesia gets a COVID-19 vaccine quota at three to 20 percent of its population," she added.

She said the availability of the vaccine was crucial in the effort to accelerate the national vaccination program.

Overall, Indonesia has received a total of three million doses of finished vaccine from Sinovac, 6.7 million doses of finished vaccine from AstraZeneca, one million doses of finished vaccine from Sinopharm, and 81.5 million doses of semi-finished vaccine from Sinovac.

Tarmizi emphasized that the government continues to improve vaccination services to reach an average of one million people per day starting in June 2021, in order to build herd immunity soon.

To that end, the government has implemented a national vaccination program for health workers, public service workers, and the elderly as well as people aged 50 years and above.

As of June 4, 2021, 17.3 million people have received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 11.1 million of them have been injected with the second dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

In the meantime, the independent vaccination program has also been conducted and as of May 30, 2021, it has reached 49,000 workers from 36 business entities or legal entities.

Also Read: Indonesia to Resume the Use of AstraZeneca in Mass-vaccination

ANTARA