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JAKARTA – Indonesia will soon receive raw materials to produce 15 million doses of vaccines from Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech, in addition to the three million doses already shipped to the country.
A Garuda Indonesia plane arrived at Indonesia’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, around noon on Thursday (December 31) with 1.8 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. This second batch follows the first of 1.2 million doses on December 6.
The doses will be used for mass inoculations scheduled to begin in early 2021.
Meanwhile, the vaccines will be stored at the facilities of state-owned vaccine producer Bio Farma in Bandung, West Java, where they will be kept in accordance with the safe storage standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO), Foreign Minister Retno said Marsudi. .
Indonesia’s top diplomat said in a statement broadcast live from the airport: “It is expected that in the near future, 15 million doses of bulk vaccine from Sinovac will also arrive in Indonesia to be manufactured by Bio Farma.”
It had previously obtained a total of 125.5 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccines from the Chinese supplier. Deliveries will continue until January 2022.
On Wednesday, Indonesian pharmaceutical company Indofarma signed a deal with US pharmaceutical company Novavax for 50 million doses of vaccines, while Biofarma signed an agreement with British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca for another 50 million doses.
The government also expects to reach an agreement with the US company Pfizer for 50 million doses in the first week of January.
In addition to the four drug makers, Indonesia, which reported 743,198 Covid-19 infections and 22,138 deaths as of Thursday, the highest of both counts in Southeast Asia, is poised to get several million free vaccine doses of the vaccine. world backed by the WHO Gavi alliance in the second quarter of next year.
Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin has said that Indonesia is expected to source a total of 330 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines from the five suppliers, and could double the supply to around 660 million doses, enough for the 426 million doses you need. you need to inoculate your target population, as well as a 15% vaccine stock as a buffer.
Speaking at the airport on Thursday, Budi said: “Hopefully, before Indonesians return to work in January, vaccines can be distributed to 34 Indonesian provinces to start vaccinations for our health workers.”
Under its latest plan, Indonesia seeks to vaccinate 181.5 million people over the age of 18, or about 67 percent of its nearly 270 million residents, the proportion authorities say is necessary to achieve herd immunity.
The vaccination program will start with 1.3 million healthcare workers, followed by another 17.4 million frontline workers and 21.5 million people aged 60 and over. They will receive the vaccines between January and April 2021.
In the second phase, which will run from April 2021 to March 2022, 63.9 million people in high-risk areas will receive the vaccines, followed by the remaining 77.4 million of the population.
Meanwhile, Bio Farma and the Bandung-based University of Padjadjaran are joining hands in research to develop two Covid-19 candidate vaccines, which they hope to complete in three years.
The first is a wheat-based recombinant protein vaccine, while the second, funded by the Indonesian Scientific Fund (DIPI), is a peptide-based recombinant vaccine. The wheat-based vaccine is expected to be completed in 2022, while the peptide-based vaccine will be completed in 2023.
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