Indonesia gets 1.2m doses of Chinese vaccine

Indonesia, which has recorded the highest number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia, has received the first shipment of 1.2 million doses of vaccine from China-based company Sinovac Biotech.

Indonesia’s state-owned pharmaceutical holding company PT Bio Farma has already worked with Sinovac in phase 3 clinical trials of its vaccine. Since August, up to 1,620 volunteers in the city of Bandung have been participating in the trial that is set to be completed in January.

So far the efficacy and safety of the vaccine is still unknown, but China announced on Monday that it had secured $515m (£390m) to increase its production of the Sinovac vaccine.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has said that mass vaccinations would only be conducted after the country’s Food and Drug Control Agency (BPOM) issued an emergency use authorisation (EUA). Another 1.8 million doses of the vaccine are expected to arrive in early January.

Besides Sinovac, the government has also planned to secure Covid-19 vaccines from other Chinese drug manufacturers, Sinopharm and CanSino Biologics, as wells as AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Pfizer/BioNtech.

Indonesia has recorded more than 575,000 infections and more than 17,700 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.