Chairman of the Indonesian Nurses Association (PPNI) Harif Fadillah urged all members to prepare themselves to receive the second booster shot of COVID-19 vaccine.

“To all members, let us strengthen our resilience by maintaining personal health and complying with health protocols at work or wherever we are,” Fadillah noted here on Friday.

The PPNI chairman noted that health human resources constitute a group that has a high risk of being exposed to COVID-19 while pointing to an increase in the number of health workers infected with COVID-19.

He said vaccination for health workers was conducted at every health care facility and at COVID-19 vaccination posts provided by the government starting from Friday (July 28).

“Since the distribution of vaccines (started) from the health office to all health care facilities, the PPNI urges all members to take part in the second booster vaccine (being held at each health care facility),” Fadillah stated.

Furthermore, he noted that the Directorate General of Disease Prevention and Control at the Health Ministry had issued Circular No. HK 02.02/C/3615 /2022 concerning the administration of the second booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine for health human resources.

Based on PPNI’s internal monitoring until now, he noted that as many as 1,736 nurses in Indonesia had been exposed to COVID-19, generally the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which currently constitute most of the COVID-19 cases in Indonesia.

In addition, the number of PPNI members targeted for the second booster shot accounts for half of the 1.9 million health workers in Indonesia, according to Fadillah.

“The exact number is with the Ministry of Health, but approximately 50-60 percent of the 1.9 million health workers are nurses in all structures of health care facilities,” Fadillah explained.

Source: Antara News