Indonesia’s Covid-19 vaccination roll-out challenge could hurt path to immunity

Name: Indonesia surpasses Philippines for Southeast Asia’s largest Covid-19 case numbers and death toll
Uploaded: 2020-11-27T05:00:15.000Z
Duration: 2 min 5 s
Description: Indonesia surpasses Philippines for Southeast Asia’s largest Covid-19 case numbers and death toll

With new cases topping 30,000 a week, Indonesia faces the urgent task of inoculating 270 million people across 17,000 islands once the vaccines are available

In places like the hotspot of Central Sulawesi, there is no airport and the only delivery route is via a seven-hour ferry ride

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People queue to collect social assistance aid in Medan, North Sumatra, amid the pandemic. Photo: EPA-EFE

Bloomberg

Published: 1:00pm, 27 Nov 2020Updated: 1:00pm, 27 Nov 2020

In Indonesia, pressure is building for authorities to get coronavirus vaccines to 270 million people living on 17,000 islands in its vast archipelago.

The government has orders with at least four vaccine suppliers, including Sinovac Biotech and AstraZeneca. That access ranks Indonesia second in Asia after China, and on par with Japan and India, for securing much-anticipated immunisations, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Few countries are relying more fervently on Covid-19 vaccines to blunt the pandemic than Indonesia.

The world’s fourth most populous nation has avoided strict lockdown measures in favour of physical-distancing guidelines that vary from province to province – a situation reminiscent of the United States, which is suffering the worst coronavirus crisis.

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Indonesia surpasses Philippines for Southeast Asia’s largest Covid-19 case numbers and death toll

With new cases topping 30,000 a week, Indonesia faces an urgent logistical challenge to ensure that vaccines – once licensed and available for widespread use – are distributed across a country spanning more than 4,800 kilometres in sufficient quantity for two doses per person administered a month apart.