By Kate Lamb
(Reuters) – Indonesia is working to produce its own COVID-19 vaccine next year, amid growing anxiety that developing countries may find it difficult to access a future jab, the head of the national team on Thursday said. Indonesian COVID-19 investigation.
“The production capacity and capacity of biotech companies in the world are, we know, limited, and global supply chains also have challenges,” said Ali Ghufron Mukti, head of the innovation team at the ministry of research and technology at Indonesia at a press conference broadcast together with the country’s foreign minister.
“Therefore, Indonesia needs to develop its own COVID-19 vaccine. And it will be for Indonesia, from Indonesia to Indonesia, ”she said.
“We are using our theory and we are optimistic that in 2021 and early 2021 this will end in the laboratory,” he said, adding that the state-run company Bio Farma could carry out tests in the second half of next year.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi has spoken in recent months about the need for developing countries to have access to any future vaccines, amid concerns that rich countries are trying to corner a limited supply.
Those concerns increased this week, when the United States announced that it had purchased the bulk of Gilead Sciences Inc.’s global supply of drug remdesivir, which was shown to accelerate recovery times for COVID-19.
The pandemic has sparked a race to find a vaccine, with more than 100 in development and about a dozen already being tested in humans.
On Thursday, Mukti also described ongoing efforts between local and foreign pharmaceutical companies to mass produce a vaccine in Indonesia. A COVID-19 vaccine development team has been commissioned to ensure the availability of a vaccine nationwide in the next 12 months.
Honesti Basyir, director of Bio Farma, told Reuters in late June that he was working with Chinese firm Sinovac on a vaccine that would enter the third phase of human clinical trials this month. If the test is successful, it could start production in the first quarter of next year with a minimum of 100 million doses.
With a population of over 265 million, Indonesia estimates that it would need more than 352 million injections of a two-dose vaccine.
On Thursday, Indonesia registered 1,624 new coronavirus cases, the largest daily increase so far, bringing the total number of cases to 59,394.
In addition to Bio Farma and Sinovac, Mukti said Indonesian private pharmaceutical firm Kalbe Farma and South Korean biotech company Genexine were cooperating to produce a vaccine.
(Additional report by Agustinus Beo Da Costa; Peter Graff edition)
