With reports of fake COVID-19 vaccines being found abroad, the Indonesian COVID-19 Task Force has reassured the public that no such thing has been detected in the country.
Task force spokesman Wiku Adisasmito said Indonesia has an airtight procurement and distribution line for COVID-19 vaccines that should prevent forgeries from going into official circulation.
“All vaccine procurement is done through a government-to-government scheme so we can guarantee they’re genuine,” Wiku said.
Wiku’s statement came in response to reports that police in China and South Africa seized thousands of doses of fake COVID-19 vaccines recently.
According to the Health Ministry, Indonesia currently has around 30 million doses of the CoronaVac vaccine, produced by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac, in circulation for the government’s mass vaccination program.
Millions more doses are expected to arrive in the coming months as Indonesia aims to inoculate 181.5 million people, or 70 percent of its total population, to trigger herd immunity against the coronavirus by March 2022.
Yesterday, Indonesia received a shipment of 1.1 million doses of a vaccine from Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca as part of a WHO-backed initiative to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries. Indonesia is expecting to receive up to a total of 23.1 million doses of the vaccine this year.
