Indonesia will prioritize health workers in Bali and Java for the first round of vaccination, the health minister said on Saturday, after the country received its first batch of a coronavirus vaccine candidate from Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac about a week ago.
“The first round of vaccination will be for health workers in Java and Bali,” Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto said in a meeting with the House of Representatives (DPR).
The two islands, where about 60 percent of Indonesia’s 267 million population reside, are prioritized due to their high number of COVID-19 cases, officials said.
Despite the arrival of 1.2 million doses of the potential vaccine developed by Sinovac in Indonesia on Dec. 6, the country is still waiting for regulatory approval for the vaccine candidate from the Food and Drugs Monitoring Agency (BPOM).
The efficacy of the vaccine has not yet been determined at this time, with state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma having said in a statement that the interim report from the Phase III trial is expected to be available only in January.
Siti Nadia Tarmizi, the spokeswoman for Indonesia’s COVID-19 vaccination program, said that vaccination can be carried out about two to three weeks after BPOM’s approval.
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