Retno and State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir led a state delegation on a two-day trip to London this week to meet with various stakeholders, including executives from AstraZeneca, who signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with the Indonesian Health Ministry on the procurement of their COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

Prior to their trip to the UK, Retno and Erick embarked on a similar mission to China in August to secure massive supplies of potential COVID-19 vaccines from several Chinese vaccine producers, including Sinovac and Sinopharm, setting up a future stockpile of nearly 300 million doses until the end of next year.

On the second leg of the August trip to the United Arab Emirates, the ministers oversaw deals struck between two state drugmakers, Kimia Farma and Indofarma, and Group 42 (G42) Health Care, an artificial intelligence-based Emirati company that is actively involved in the research, development and distribution of COVID-19 testing and treatment applications.

“In the meeting with AstraZeneca, we mainly discussed in detail the vaccine supply commitment, apart from the bilateral commitments that we previously had with Sinovac and Sinopharm/G42,” Retno told reporters on Wednesday.

Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartanto previously said the government was going to make a 50 percent down payment for a potential vaccine from AstraZeneca by the end of this month in a deal totaling US$500 million.

Retno said negotiating teams from Indonesia and AstraZeneca had struck a deal virtually for a vaccine candidate that used a non-replicating viral vector platform and was one of the world’s leading potential COVID-19 vaccine, currently in the final stage of human trials.

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