TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Jokowi optimistic about COVID-19 vaccine
Change Size
P
resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Tuesday voiced optimism about the COVID-19 candidate vaccine being developed in the country.
“We have been developing our own vaccine for the past three months, specifically from the COVID-19 virus strain spread in Indonesia. Hopefully the vaccine will be ready soon and it [the vaccine development] is expected to be completed by mid-2021,” he said Tuesday at a ceremony to launch late-stage human trials of the vaccine being developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd with Indonesian state-owned peer Bio Farma at the Padjadjaran University (Unpad) School of Medicine’s hospital in Bandung, West Java.
Twenty registered volunteers were injected with the potential vaccine for the first time at the hospital of Unpad’s School of Medicine on Tuesday. The trial is expected to finish in six months at the earliest and will require a total of 1,620 volunteers.
According to Bio Farma, 540 volunteers were gathered in the first phase of registration, and 1,080 volunteers are expected to be enrolled in the second phase.
West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil announced Monday that he had registered himself as a volunteer for the trials, but was currently still waiting for confirmation.
Bio Farma envisioned gradual trials, with 120 volunteers scheduled to receive injections by this week and 144 volunteers to take part in each of the following weeks.
“We are proud that a state-owned enterprise [SOE] like Bio Farma in partnership with Sinovac Biotech of China are able to begin phase III clinical trials. Not many countries or institutions have been able to reach this stage,” SOEs Minister Erick Thohir, who is also the head of the COVID-19 mitigation and national economic recovery committee, said in a written statement on Tuesday.
The candidate vaccine known as CoronaVac and previously PiCoVacc, is among few potential vaccines that have entered late-stage trials for a large-scale study to gather proof of efficacy for regulatory approval.
It is one of 26 candidate vaccines that are in clinical evaluation according to a compilation made by the World Health Organization on July 31. There are 139 candidate vaccines in preclinical evaluation.
If the clinical trial proves the candidate vaccine is effective in battling the coronavirus, the minister vowed to facilitate the company for mass production.
“I thank the volunteers, the laboratory teams from Bio Farma and Sinovac, as well as Padjadjaran University for conducting the crucial stage of this vaccine development. […] If it goes well, we will prepare the vaccine registration to the Food and Drug Supervisory Agency (BPOM), so that the vaccine can be massively produced to combat COVID-19,” he added.
Previously, Erick claimed Bio Farma was ready to produce 250 million doses of the Sinovac coronavirus vaccine per year by the end of 2020.
Fourteen days after receiving the first injections, volunteers who show no reaction will be scheduled to receive the second injection and the health condition of each volunteer will be followed over the course of six months. The clinical trials are expected to be finished by January 2021 at the earliest.
