Yogyakarta – The Health Ministry is pushing the first booster vaccination ahead of the 2023 Eid al-Fitr homecoming to ensure that COVID-19 cases remain under control.
Whether the second booster will become a travel requirement or not will depend on the results of a survey, but what is important is the first booster, head of the public communication and service bureau of the ministry, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, said.
The interval between vaccination doses is generally six months, she confirmed here on Friday.
The first booster has become important because Indonesians have mostly received the complete primary doses or two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, meaning that most of them have exceeded the interval for the third dose.
“The team will review whether the booster should become a travel requirement during Eid al-Fitr homecoming,” Tarmizi said.
According to the ministry’s COVID-19 vaccination dashboard, the total number of second dose recipients as of February 9, 2023, reached 174.80 million, or 74.49 percent of the total target of 234.66 million.
Meanwhile, only 69.66 million people, or 29.69 percent of the targeted recipients have been administered the first booster.
Meanwhile, the number of second booster recipients has only crossed 1.78 million or 0.77 percent of the target.
“The requirement to receive the second booster is to receive the first booster,” Tarmizi informed.
The second booster, as a requirement for homecoming travel, should consider the previous administration interval given that Eid al-Fitr homecoming is estimated to occur in the middle of April 2023.
This means that the majority of people will require a time interval between the first and second booster.
“Currently, there are 60 million-ish people who have received the first booster, and it takes 6 months to receive the second booster,” she said.
“If they have not received the first booster, they need another 6 months. That means that Eid al-Fitr has already passed,” she explained.
However, the ministry is still conducting a number of joint reviews with several related parties for formulating the booster vaccination policy as a homecoming requirement.
Source: Antara News