Indonesia Receives 1 Million Doses of Astrazeneca’s Covid-19 Vaccine

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com – Indonesia has received over 1.1 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine from the Astrazeneca pharmaceutical company. The shipment of the vaccines is the sixth of its kind, since the country started receiving Covid-19 vaccines since December 2020.

The vaccines arrived on a Boeing 777 flown by Dutch flag carrier KLM at Soekarno-Hatta Internation Airport in Tangerang, Banten Province on Monday, March 8.

“AstraZeneca brought 4.1 tons, or 1,113,600 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine in 11,136 cartons,” said Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, who received the shipment alongside Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin.

Also read: BPOM Greenlights Sinovac Covid-19 Vaccine Manufactured by Bio Farma

Representatives of the World Health Organization [WHO] and UNICEF [United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund] were also on hand to receive the vaccines.

“The shipment is the first ready to use vaccines be obtained from multilateral diplomacy between [Indonesian] ministries and [international] institutions.”

She added that the vaccines will be followed by more shipments before the second half of the year. “Indonesia will receive the first batch of 11,478,000 ready to use vaccines by May 2021. Insya Allah [God willing], we will receive further batches [later in 2021],” she added.

Also read: Indonesia Receives Additional 1.8 Million Vaccines From Sinovac

Retno also expressed her thanks to international parties, among them donor countries, the GAVI facility, WHO, UNICEF as well as other institutions, for their aid.

“[The Indonesian Foreign Ministry] will continue vaccine diplomacy to support the government’s efforts to build up herd immunity and [Indonesia’s] economic recovery.”

Indonesia has tallied 1,386,556 Covid-19 cases since the first case was detected on March 2, 2020, following an additional 6,894 cases as of March 8. The pandemic has claimed 37,547 people, whie 1,203,381 others recovered from the coronavirus

President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s administration aims to vaccinate more than 180 million Indonesians before 2022 to gain herd immunity against Covid-19. T

(Writer: Sania Mashabi, Haryanti Puspa Sari, Tatang Guritno | Editors: Icha Rastika, Diamanty Meiliana, Dani Prabowo)

Sources: 

https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2021/03/08/18295231/indonesia-kedatangan-1-juta-vaksin-astrazeneca. 

https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2021/03/08/20355701/indonesia-dapat-11748000-vaksin-covid-19-dari-jalur-multilateral-pada-batch. 

https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2021/03/08/17235321/update-8-maret-6894-kasus-baru-covid-19-tersebar-di-32-provinsi-dki-jakarta?page=all#page2.