Indonesia to punish those who refuse to take Covid-19 vaccine

Making the Covid-19 vaccine compulsory is an unusual move amid widespread hesitance toward the shots that were rushed in its development.

Indonesia is requiring those eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine to take the shots as the country seeks ways to quicken its inoculation program to curb Southeast Asia’s largest outbreak.

Market workers wait to receive a dose of the Sinovac Biotech Ltd. Covid-19 vaccine at Tanah Abang market in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021. (Bloomberg)

The government can punish those who refuse the vaccine by stopping or delaying social assistance programs and administrative services as well as impose fines, according to a revised presidential rule. The actual form of the sanctions are left to local governments to decide.

Making the Covid-19 vaccine compulsory is an unusual move amid widespread hesitance toward the shots that were rushed in its development.

A survey last September found that about 65% of Indonesians would want to get the shots, while the rest were concerned about the cost, health risks and whether the vaccine would be halal. The government has since made the vaccine free of charge.

Indonesia has administered more than 1.7 million shots in a program that started with President Joko Widodo himself receiving the first dose, a bid to bolster public confidence in the Sinovac Biotech Ltd. vaccine. That’s a long way from the more than 180 million people that the government seeks to inoculate by the end of the year.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.