Indonesia rolls out company-funded inoculation drive for employees

Indonesia is stepping up its vaccination programme, with the start of company-funded inoculations for employees yesterday.

Workers in labour-intensive industries such as food and petrochemicals will be the first to receive their jabs under the roll-out, as the country casts its eye on maintaining its economic output.

President Joko Widodo said yesterday: "We hope factories, industrial estates will all be protected from Covid-19... They play an important role in our economic growth. If production is impeded, our economic growth will decline."

He was speaking during an online broadcast of a vaccination exercise at 18 locations of an industrial estate in West Java province.

Companies taking part in the programme include consumer goods giant Unilever Indonesia, petrochemical producer Chandra Asri and Sinar Mas Agribusiness and Food.

Each company will be administering between 2,000 and 4,000 shots for their workers.

The private programme will complement Indonesia's free vaccine drive for the public. The country started its vaccination campaign in mid-January, focusing on priority groups such as health workers, the police and military. This free programme will be expanded to the public by July.

Mr Widodo said Indonesia, like other nations, is facing a rising challenge in procuring vaccines.

For the private vaccine programme, only 420,000 doses have arrived, out of the 30-million commitment it had received from vaccine makers, he added.

China's Sinopharm vaccine is initially being used for the private inoculation programme while China's Sinovac and Britain's AstraZeneca are the suppliers for the free vaccine programme.

Mr Widodo also said in his speech: "Up to now, we have put 23 million vaccine doses into arms, from a target of 380 million doses."

The proportion of Indonesia's total population that has received at least one dose of a vaccine as at May 4 was 4.64 per cent, according to ourworldindata.org and SDG-Tracker, a joint effort between the University of Oxford and non-profit Global Change Data Lab.

The figure for Indonesia is the highest among countries in South-east Asia with a population of more than 20 million. Malaysia, for instance, recorded 2.83 per cent, and Vietnam 0.6 per cent.

The private vaccine programme is expected to help Indonesia reach herd immunity faster, Mr Widodo said, adding that the nation expects to inoculate a total of 181.5 million, or 67 per cent, of its 270 million population by next year.

He said: "We hope in August, or by September the latest, we will have inoculated 70 million people, so by then the (epidemiological) curve will be at a low point."

Indonesia reported minus 0.74 per cent economic growth in the first quarter, compared with the same year-ago period, but expects to turn to positive growth in the second quarter because production across industries will run normally, Mr Widodo added.