Jakarta (Indonesia Window) – Indonesia needs 364 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to achieve herd immunity, said President Joko Widodo (locally known as Jokowi).

"We hope that later on 70 percent of Indonesia's population will be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity," the president said in an event at the Bogor Presidential Palace in West Java on Friday.

The head of state explained that to achieve herd immunity, vaccinations should be carried out on 182 million people, with two injections for each person.

"That means 364 million injections. We hope that vaccinations will be completed in no more than a year,” said the president, emphasizing that vaccination is one of the efforts to escape the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Jokowi added that the vaccination would be carried out next week after the National Agency of Drug and Food Control issued an Emergency Use Authorization, and a fatwa (a formal ruling or interpretation on a point of Islamic law given by a qualified legal scholar) from the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) regarding the halal (permissible in Islamic law) status of the vaccine.

"We hope that the emergency use authorization will be issued immediately by the agency, so that later I will be the first to get the shot," said the president.

Reporting by Indonesia Window