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View all search resultsDon’t count on a vaccine
Experts say the journey to a successful vaccine trial still has a long way to go and the process to secure a license will take time.
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I
ndonesia clearly is betting on a vaccine as a quick fix to the debilitating COVID-19 pandemic. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo asked his ministers Monday to prepare a detailed road map on the national COVID-19 vaccination program within two weeks, although it remains uncertain whether an effective and safe vaccine will be available anytime soon.
On Wednesday Jokowi reiterated his guarded optimism that between 170 and 180 million doses of vaccine would be available by the end of the year and mass vaccination could begin. The government will allocate about Rp 22 trillion (US$1.5 billion) for the vaccination program.
Indonesia has gone as far as China and the United Arab Emirates to secure a deal to import millions of doses of vaccine, while forging a cooperation with giant pharma companies from China and South Korea to produce COVID-19 vaccine at home. State pharmaceutical company Bio Farma, for example, will be ready to expand its capacity to 250 million doses per month in the first quarter of next year to produce a vaccine being developed by China’s Sinovac. The candidate vaccine is now entering the final stage of human trials in Bandung, which will run until January next year.
The government’s yearning for a vaccine, however, is risky as there is still a possibility the candidate vaccine will not pass the scrutiny of the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM). Even World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned there is no guarantee that any of the COVID-19 candidate vaccines currently in development will work.
According to the WHO, almost 200 vaccines for COVID-19 are currently in clinical and pre-clinical testing. History shows that vaccine development sometimes fails and sometimes succeeds.
Experts say the journey to a successful vaccine trial still has a long way to go and the process to secure a license will take time. Besides, many still do not know what the effects of the COVID-19 vaccine will be, and how effective the vaccine may be in ending the pandemic.
David Morens, senior adviser to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States, describes the vaccine development as a blind trial, which may be successful at the beginning but end in failure.
