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President Joko “Jokowi,” Widodo said on Thursday that the government would start administering Covid-19 vaccination next week to public servants and workers in service industries, two weeks ahead of schedule, ramping up its effort to protect Indonesia’s population from the pandemic. Jokowi kicked off the vaccination program by taking the first-dose shot on Jan 13. Indonesia targets to vaccinate more than 181 million people aged 18 and above by the end of March next year.

Initially, the government aimed to complete vaccinating 1.47 million medical workers first by the end of February before moving on to other groups.

So far, the country has managed to inject the first vaccine dose to close to one million people. Yesterday, it administered more than 181,000 vaccine shots, the highest daily number so far. Should the pace continue, all the health workers should be covered by next week.

The President asked city mayors attending the meeting to carry out the vaccination at a cluster or communal level at a time, instead of administering them individually. Jokowi said earlier that Indonesia has around 30,000 vaccinators stand ready at 10,000 community health centers and 3,000 hospitals throughout the archipelago. The President aimed to administer at least 1 million doses per day to meet the target.