Jakarta. Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo will receive the first dose of coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech on Jan. 13, an aide said on Tuesday.
The event will be aired live to encourage other people to get the jab as newly cases and death toll have been rising dramatically since late November.
“The president will receive the vaccine next Wednesday and we will discuss details of the event on Friday,” according to Heru Budi Harto, the head of the presidential secretariat.
The discussion will decide other prominent figures who will get the shot alongside the president, he said.
Heru confirmed that the president will be injected with the Sinovac vaccine, currently is the sole coronavirus vaccine available in the country.
Indonesia began the rollout of Sinovac vaccine on Sunday and since then at least 700,000 doses have been distributed to 34 provinces, President Jokowi said at the State Palace in Central Jakarta.
“The first batch of vaccine delivery amounts to 700,000 doses but we plan another delivery very soon as we currently have 3 million doses in stock,” the president said.
The initial stage of vaccination targets mainly medical workers across the country.
Daily Updates
There have been 779,548 confirmed cases of coronavirus as of Tuesday, with 7,445 new cases detected in the past 24 hours, according to the latest figures from the Health Ministry.
The virus has killed 23,109 people since the outbreak began in the country, including 109 in the 24-hour period.
Indonesia currently has 110,693 active cases of the highly contagious disease, representing 14.2 percent of the overall cases.
The seven-day average has topped 7,000 cases for the eighth day in row, continuing the upward trend in newly infections that has began since late November.
The daily death toll has been in the three-digit territory for 45 consecutive days, the deadliest period in the Indonesian outbreak with an average of 163 deaths per day.
Jakarta has been averaging 1,833 cases since the start of the month to bring its total to 192,899, more than any other province.
The capital city recorded 19 more Covid deaths to take its total death toll to 3,366, the third-highest among other provinces.
West Java is the second province where daily cases exceeded 1,000 in the last five days. It has recorded a total of 89,661 cases and 1,188 deaths.
East Java added 727 cases for a total of 87,797 amid ongoing surge in new cases.
The province has the highest casualty toll with a total of 6,119 coronavirus-related deaths, an increase of 54 on its total the previous day.
Neighboring Central Java is closing in on East Java with a total of 86,545 cases, including 3,840 deaths.
South Sulawesi reported a new high in daily number with 639 cases to bring its total to 33,931, the biggest outside Java. It has broken its own record for the highest daily number three times in the last five days.
Newly cases are also trending up in East Kalimantan, Bali and two remaining Javanese provinces namely Yogyakarta and Banten.
Yogyakarta is not inside the group of ten worst-affected provinces but its total number of cases has risen dramatically to 13,340 on Tuesday from 6,732 only a month ago.
During the same period, Banten has overtaken Bali and North Sumatra to rank ninth currently.
The surge is slowing in Riau and West Sumatra, which remain in the top ten worst-hit provinces.
