President Joko Widodo should, in theory, be protected from severe COVID-19 symptoms after he received his second scheduled CoronaVac shot this morning.
The president received the jab at the Presidential Palace exactly 14 days after his first dose.
“Just like two weeks ago, I didn’t feel anything. Last time, after two hours, I felt some aches, but I was fine afterwards and carried out my activities as usual,” Jokowi said in an interview right after receiving his shot.
The president was then asked about how many health workers — the country’s first priority vaccine recipients — have been vaccinated since the program launched two weeks ago, considering that the government has not released official data on vaccine numbers thus far.
“Right now, around 250,000 health workers have been vaccinated. But in the past couple of days the number has risen sharply, in that we were able to vaccinate 50,000 a day. We hope that with our 30,000 vaccinators in 10 thousand community clinics and hospitals, we can at least vaccinate 900,000 to a million a day. But that needs time and proper field management,” Jokowi said.
The government previously said it aimed to vaccinate around 800,000 people per day in order to achieve its goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the population by early 2022.
After Jokowi, other top officials, including Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin and Armed Forces Commander Hadi Tjahjanto, as well as celebrity/influencer Raffi Ahmad, also received their second shots this morning, though the latter would undoubtedly think carefully about attending parties from now on.
CoronaVac has a relatively low reported efficacy rate among other COVID-19 vaccines that have been authorized for use around the world. However, the inactivated-virus vaccine has been touted to be able to offer complete protection against severe symptoms related to the disease following a second dose.
