Indonesia President Joko Widodo warned Monday against any rushed rollout of coronavirus vaccines, cautioning whether they were halal and therefore considered permissible for Muslims to use.
“I ask that this vaccine is not rushed because it’s so complex,” Jokowi said ahead of a closed meeting in the capital Jakarta, Reuters reports.
“I want to ensure there is good preparation. On public communication, especially in relation to halal and haram, the price, and quality.”
Indonesia has previously pledged to vaccinate more than 100 million people next year, but Widodo said that scale of inoculation across the island nation of 270 million would be uniquely challenging.
Controversy over whether vaccines adhere to Islamic principles has stymied public health responses before in Indonesia, including in 2018, when the Indonesian Ulema Council issued a fatwa declaring a measles vaccine was haram, or forbidden under Islam.
The use of vaccines is a matter of constant debate around the world.
In Indonesia some doctors have even been attacked as they sought to determine the spread of the disease, as Breitbart News reported.
The city of Surabaya organized Chinese coronavirus testing for residents of a local apartment complex on September 23. The results of the swab tests were released on September 28 and “included a possible coronavirus infection for an unnamed male resident who suffers from underlying health conditions,” according to the report.
The following day, city healthcare workers visited the apartment complex however the medics “encountered resistance from his wife and children,” an Indonesian news outlet revealed.
“They kept resisting, and then they did that (smeared excrement) on the healthcare worker’s hazmat suit,” Surabaya city administration spokesman Febriadhitya Prajatara told reporters.
A healthcare worker smeared with excrement when picking up a patient in Surabaya, East Java. Photo: Surabaya City Administration
As Indonesia debates the efficacy of vaccine use, confirmed cases of coronavirus are surging across the planet and have now passed 40 million, according to data released early Monday morning by Johns Hopkins University.
The actual figure is likely to be far higher, as testing has been variable, and many people have had no symptoms, the university said by way of qualification when it made the numbers public.