Jakarta. President Joko “Jokowi,” Widodo said on Thursday that the government would start administering Covid-19 vaccination next week to public servants and workers in service industries, two weeks ahead of schedule, ramping up its effort to protect Indonesia’s population from the pandemic.

“Starting next week, [the program] will start for people who are often in touch with the community,” Jokowi said in an address to open the Sixth National Conference of the Association of Indonesian City Governments (Apeksi) from the State Palace in Jakarta.

“People with a high level of interaction, mobility, must come first [in the vaccination], for example, those who work at the markets or service sectors,” Jokowi said.

Jokowi kicked off the vaccination program by taking the first-dose shot on Jan 13. Indonesia targets to vaccinate more than 181 million people aged 18 and above by the end of March next year.

Initially, the government aimed to complete vaccinating 1.47 million medical workers first by the end of February before moving on to other groups.

So far, the country has managed to inject the first vaccine dose to close to one million people. Yesterday, it administered more than 181,000 vaccine shots, the highest daily number so far. Should the pace continue, all the health workers should be covered by next week.