TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin in a talk show touted ‘Ngobrol Tempo’ said next year’s national vaccine needs will include two programs, namely vaccination for children and booster shots. It will need at least over 50 million doses.

“The government’s booster vaccines will be 100 million while paid booster shots will be 121 million doses,” said Budi in the event held virtually on Tuesday, December 28.

For the third Covid-19 shots, the Health Ministry predicts that it will be supplied from vaccine donations, mainly from the expected 54 million doses from the COVAX facility.

“Covax’s recent instruction said that it will not provide vaccine for only 20 percent of the population, but 30 percent. So, Indonesia will receive 10 percent more based on the population. So we can receive [vaccines for] 27 million people or the equivalent of 54 million doses of vaccines,” said Budi.

On another note, the U.S. FDA approved the use of half a Moderna dose as a booster shot. It deemed that the full dose of the vaccine had shown a quite strong after-effect.

This, in fact, has been endorsed by the Indonesian Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM). The report on the effectiveness of this half-dose booster will be issued on January 10 as it is being tested again by a team of researchers from ITAGI, professors from multiple universities such as University of Indonesia, Padjadjaran University, Gadjah Mada University.

The government, according to the Health Minister, can utilize half doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines as booster shots. This means there are 54 million vaccine doses from the donation scheme that can be injected to 100 million of the Indonesian population.

CAESAR AKBAR