President Of Indonesia To Receive First COVID-19 Vaccine Dose

President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, will be taking the lead as the first Indonesian to be vaccinated against COVID-19 while promising to vaccinate the rest of the population for free.

The Southeast Asian nation has recorded over 630,000 coronavirus cases, with over 19,000 deaths.

Announcing that the vaccines that will be distributed across the country will be free, Widodo took to Twitter to say, “The Covid-19 vaccine for all citizens will be FREE.”

Although, prior to the announcement, the Indonesian government had said that not everyone would receive the vaccine for free, stating that only the elderly, health workers, and major personnel would get it free.

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The president's reason for submitting himself as the first person to receive the vaccine in his country was to clear doubts surrounding the vaccine.

He said, “There’s no reason people shouldn’t get the vaccine or doubt its safety.”

The almost-300-million populated country, the fourth globally, has contracted pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca - a British-Swedish company - and Sinovac - a Chinese company - to produce over 350 million COVID-19 vaccine doses.

Sinovac has delivered Indonesia's first 1.2 million vaccine doses, while an extra 1.8 million doses will be delivered in January.