By Stanley Widianto and Kate Lamb
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia is in talks with several African countries, including Nigeria, to export and donate its homemade COVID-19 vaccine, its developer said on Friday, after the first Southeast Asian country approved an evolved COVID vaccine.
The approval of the vaccine by Indonesia, whose detailed knowledge of the trial has yet to be announced and is basically based on coroanvirus variants that predate Omicron, underscores advances in vaccine studies and reduced reliance on foreign technology.
“With IndovacArray. . . this is an opportunity for Indonesia to donate,” Honesti Basyir, CEO of state-run Bio Farma, told Reuters, referring to the recombinant protein COVID vaccine that was approved through drug regulator BPOM last month.
Bio Farma said it also submitted documents to the World Health Organization for approval of an Emergency Use List (EUL) for IndoVac, which would allow it to receive organizations such as the global vaccine exchange program COVAX.
Meanwhile, Indonesia can export the vaccine.
“We are not closed off the option to export, as long as BPOM approval can be accepted through local regulators,” Honesti said, adding that the priority is to vaccinate Indonesians first.
However, customers to export the vaccine are limited, as COVID injections abound internationally and Indovac is not being developed to target the dominant variant of Omicron.
African countries struggled early in the pandemic to get COVID vaccines while rich countries stockpiled doses. But many are now well stocked with vaccines and find it difficult to administer them, either because of hesitation or logistics.
IndoVac, developed in conjunction with the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital at Baylor College of Medicine, is the number one vaccine for adults in Indonesia.
Honesti said studies have begun creating an edition aimed at Omicron, adding that the progression of its COVID vaccine has given Indonesia confidence in its reliance on foreign technology.
Bio Farma plans to produce 20 million doses of IndoVac this year, however, the final source on the government’s vaccination plans.
Indonesia has fully vaccinated more than 63 percent of its other 270 million people with injections from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) and China’s Sinovac Biotech.
Honesti said Bio Farma stopped generating Sinovac’s vaccine last year and didn’t get more from the Chinese company because it focuses on IndoVac.
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