JAKARTA: Dina, who hails from Central Java but studies in the East Javan city of Malang, is dying to go back to her hometown during the upcoming Idul Fitri holidays.
The 22-year-old university student has not been home since late last year after some physical classes resumed on campus.
The first thing she wants to do when she reaches home? To convince her mother to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“My mother is a strong anti-vaxxer,” Dina, who only wanted to be known by her first name, told CNA.
“She has been reading hoaxes forwarded by her friends over WhatsApp. She truly believes that vaccines are more dangerous than the coronavirus, even though some of her neighbours and friends have died from COVID-19.”
Around 15 months after launching a massive national vaccination drive, Indonesia is lagging behind some of its Southeast Asian neighbours in terms of full vaccination rate.
The world’s fourth most populous country has 59 per cent of its 270 million population fully inoculated as of Monday (Apr 4).
In comparison, Singapore has 92 per cent of its total population fully vaccinated while Malaysia’s figure is 79 per cent. Meanwhile, Thailand’s and Vietnam’s figures are reportedly 72 per cent and 79 per cent respectively.
Around 232 million people in Indonesia are over six years old and thus eligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
According to figures from the Indonesian health ministry, as of Apr 4, there are around 72 million Indonesians over the age of six who have not been fully vaccinated. Of this figure, more than 35 million have not been inoculated at all.
The national vaccination drive appears to be losing steam. Experts say this means that there are millions of people who are at risk of contracting COVID-19 and developing life threatening symptoms should Indonesia face another wave of infections.
With a holiday exodus on the cards during Idul Fitri, the government wants more to be vaccinated this Ramadan.
VACCINATION DRIVE LOSING STEAM
Windhu Purnomo, an epidemiologist at Indonesia’s Airlangga University noted that Indonesia’s vaccination drive is slowing down overall, particularly for the first and second jabs.
According to data from the health ministry, there were 23 million vaccinations in March. More than half were boosters for people who were already fully vaccinated.
This is a far cry from how more than 2 million jabs were administered daily during the early days of Indonesia’s vaccination drive which kicked off in January last year.
“Back then, vaccines were in demand from people who truly understood that they needed to protect themselves from the virus. But these people represent at most 60 per cent of the population,” Mr Purnomo told CNA.
Montty Giriana, vaccination division coordinator at Indonesia’s Committee for COVID-19 Mitigation and National Economic Recovery (KPCPEN) admitted last week that the number of vaccinated Indonesians is hitting a plateau.
“Some people are afraid of the side effects of vaccination,” Mr Giriana said during a parliamentary hearing on Mar 30. Another reason, he continued, is that some people live in remote villages and find it hard to get to vaccination centres, particularly the elderly.
“We need to educate the public that vaccination is important and that the side effects are mostly harmless. There must also be efforts to make door-to-door visits,” he said, adding that such efforts require a lot of time, manpower and money.