Indonesia to Vaccinate 9.1 million People Starting November 2020

Jakarta, MINA – Indonesia plans to provide Covid-19 vaccine to 9.1 million people in November-December 2020.

The Health Ministry’s Disease Control and Prevention Director General Achmad Yurianto said vaccinations would be carried out after the Food and Drug Supervisory Agency (BPOM) issued an emergency use authorization (UEA). Thus quoted from Anadolu Agency on Tuesday.

In addition, the government is also waiting for the halal certification from the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) for this vaccine.

“If this 9.1 million is later declared useful, it will be marked with an EUA letter from our BPOM, then a letter from the Ministry of Religion and MUI regarding halal issues, then we will inject that amount,” said Yurianto in a press conference in Jakarta, Monday.

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The supply of vaccines to be used is the result of commitments from three Chinese companies, namely Sinovac Biotech, Sinopharm, and Cansino.

Yuri continued the three vaccine candidates from China had pocketed the authorization for emergency use in China.

Indonesia will get a total of 18.1 million doses from the three companies, each person who is vaccinated will receive two doses.

The government will prioritize medical personnel and public service personnel in this early stage vaccination program.

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He said the vaccine would only be given to people in the age range 18-59 years, because clinical trials of vaccine candidates in the world had not yet touched a category outside that age range.

The inspection teams from BPOM and LPPOM MUI are currently in China to check the vaccine production processes of the three pharmaceutical companies.

In addition to checking the production process, the team will also ask for data on clinical trial results from the three vaccine candidates in various countries such as Brazil, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and others.

Indonesia itself is also involved in the third stage clinical trial process for the Sinovac vaccine candidate in Bandung, West Java.

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However, the full results of this clinical trial will not appear until March 2021.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health is also preparing a team to monitor post-immunization incidents so that all side effects of this vaccination are recorded.

Yurianto also noted that the immunity that this vaccine candidate could generate was still unknown.

“We don’t have data on how long it will take for the Covid-19 vaccine to cause immunity, but in theory, some say it takes six months to 24 months,” said Yurianto.

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Yurianto said that Indonesia’s national vaccine needs are 320 million doses of vaccine for 160 million people to achieve community immunity or herd immunity.

The amount is equivalent to 70 percent of the population in Indonesia.

Apart from the vaccine supply that will come in November-December, Indonesia has also secured a commitment to send vaccine raw materials from Sinovac in stages in 2021.

“The raw material or what we call bulk will be processed by Bio Farma to become a vaccine,” he said.

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In addition, Indonesia has also secured a commitment to supply vaccines from the British pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, for 100 million doses by 2021.

He also said that it would be very important for Indonesia to be independent in vaccine development and production, considering that the immune power of vaccine candidates that are still being developed is currently unknown.

One of them is through the development of the Red and White vaccine by the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology (LBM).

“This (red and white vaccine) buffers our independence against vaccines,” he said.

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Indonesia has so far confirmed 365,240 cases of Covid-19, with 289,243 cases recovered and 12,617 dead. (T/RE1)

Mi’ra News Agency (MINA)

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