Grab Drive-Through Service to Boost Indonesia Vaccine Drive
Grab Drive-Thru Service to Boost Indonesia Vaccination Campaign
(Bloomberg) -- Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing giant Grab Holdings Inc. is setting up drive-through vaccination services across Indonesia in collaboration with the government to help the nation inoculate more than 180 million people against Covid-19.
The program, which started Sunday on the resort island of Bali, is the first to be done in Southeast Asia, Grab Indonesia President Ridzki Kramadibrata said in a virtual news briefing.
Indonesia has made it mandatory for eligible citizens to take a shot. The nation is aggressively rolling out a mass-inoculation drive as it struggles to contain the largest coronavirus outbreak in Southeast Asia. It plans to vaccinate 70 million people by August, roughly a third of the total target of 181.5 million for the public campaign.
“We need to collaborate with the private sector to speed up the vaccine campaign,” Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said at the briefing.
The government, via PT Bio Farma and PT Kimia Farma, will supply shots made by Moderna Inc. and Sinopharm Group Co. for use in the private vaccination program, according to a statement Sunday.
The Grab vaccine center in Bali is prepared to dispense 840 shots a day, for a total of 5,000 vaccinations in a week, the company said in a statement. The first center plans to vaccinate 2,500 drivers in the transportation sector, including Grab drivers and delivery-partners and 2,500 public sector workers in tourism in Bali. More drive-through centers will be set up soon in various cities, Kramadibrata said.
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As of Saturday, 1.47 million people in Indonesia have received their first dose of the Sinovac Biotech Ltd. vaccine, while over 980,000 have taken their second. Around 1.3 million people in the country have been infected and more than 35,000 died from the virus.
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