Indonesia is set to be the testing ground for one of the most promising potential COVID-19 vaccines out there, but it appears that the development had President Joko Widodo carried away with optimism.
Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech is set to conduct advanced clinical trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine in Bandung, West Java next month, working in collaboration with state-owned pharmaceutical holding company PT Bio Farma and Bandung’s Padjadjaran University.
The trial, which will involve 1,620 subjects aged 18-59, is expected to be concluded by January 2021, the research team said.
But during a meeting between President Jokowi and the research team at the Presidential Palace yesterday, the head of state asked if the trial and subsequent production of the vaccine could be fast-tracked.
“The president gave a special instruction for us to quickly make this vaccine available. If possible, in three months,” lead researcher Kusnadi Rusmil said following his meeting with the president yesterday during a press conference.
“We said three months is impossible. We have to do this carefully and correctly,” he continued. “There are guidelines to clinical trials as provided by the World Health Organization. It has to be like this, we can’t rush it. We may end up with something unsatisfactory and it’s possible that side effects of the vaccine would go unobserved.”
Upon satisfactory completion of the clinical trials, PT Bio Farma said it would produce 40 million doses of the vaccine in the first year, with the aim of gradually increasing its production capability 250 million doses per year.
