At least 50 million doses of a vaccine from American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Pfizer is expected to arrive gradually in Indonesia starting in August, the country’s Health Ministry said.
“The Pfizer [vaccine] will arrive gradually starting August. There will be a total of 50 million doses, with an estimated 5 to 12 million doses coming in every shipment each month,” the Health Ministry’s vaccination spokeswoman Siti Nadia Tarmizi said this week.
Nadia said the arrival of the Pfizer vaccine will help accelerate the national vaccination program for the second half of the year.
Indonesia has so far brought in 104.7 million vaccine doses in bulk form and ready-for-use form. The national vaccination program has been largely dependent on a vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac and a vaccine developed by Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, the latter of which the country has received through the WHO-backed COVAX initiative.
Indonesia is also expected to receive 50 million doses of a vaccine developed by American biotechnology company Novavax, with the first shipments slated to arrive in July.
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Penny K. Lukito, who heads the Food and Drugs Monitoring Agency (BPOM), said that the agency has yet to receive the registration or application for the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the usage of Pfizer’s vaccines in Indonesia.
The national vaccination program has just entered the third phase, targeting 141.3 million of people at risk and the general public. This stage is still being gradually implemented in several regions, but will be kicked off across Indonesia’s 34 provinces from July onwards.
More than 23.5 million people have received their first COVID-19 jab in Indonesia, according to data from the Health Ministry, while over 12.3 million people have been fully vaccinated, representing around 4.6 percent of the total population. Indonesia is aiming to fully vaccinate 70 percent of its population, or 181 million people, by early 2022.
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