Covid-19 vaccine for children: Indonesia vaccinates children aged 6 – 11.
Maxi Rein Rondonuwu, Indonesia’s acting Director-General, Disease Prevention and Control, says the country will begin to vaccinate children between the ages of 6 and 11 against COVID-19 from Tuesday.
Rondonuwu in a written statement on Monday as quoted by Indonesian magazine, Tempo, said, “we expect that the vaccine rollout will be kicked off on Tuesday (14/12) in several regions and continues gradually until next year for children aged 6 to 11 years.”
According to the health official, the vaccination campaign would target a total of 26.8 million children.
The first stage of the vaccination campaign will be carried out in cities where the percentage of first dose vaccinations reached 70 per cent, which is around 8.8 million children residing in 106 cities.
The country will administer the China-made Sinovac vaccine that has been already approved for administration in children in a number of countries such as Colombia, Ecuador and Hong Kong.
Rondonuwu added that vaccination service posts would also be available at schools as well as other education centres and orphanages.
COVID-19 infection rates are currently low in Indonesia with just 163 new cases reported in the past 24 hours with the total number of active cases standing at 5,158.
The country has yet to reach high vaccination rates with only 37.6 per cent of the public fully inoculated against the virus.
The country has approved all available COVID-19 vaccines, including Russia’s Sputnik V.
