YAKARTA / BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese company Sinovac Biotech Ltd on Tuesday presented a trial on the final human phase involving up to 1,620 patients in Indonesia for a COVID-19 candidate vaccine that it will present with its Indonesian state counterpart Bio Farma.
The candidate, known as CoronaVac and formerly PiCoVacc, is one of the few prospective vaccines that have entered complex large-scale trials to gather evidence of effectiveness for regulatory approval.
CoronaVac is already undergoing a complex level test in Brazil for up to 9,000 people.
His trial in Indonesia comes as Southeast Asia’s most populous country is grappling with the peak of infections, with more than 127,000 cases on Tuesday. The trial has recruited another 1215 people and will last six months.
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo attended a rite of liberation Tuesday in Bandung, West Java.
“The risk of COVID-19 will go away until a vaccine is given to everyone,” Widodo said.
Sinovac is also planning to be the vaccine candidate in Bangladesh.
Separately, Sinovac released the main points that expired monday from a mid-term study, or Phase 2, in which he said the candidate vaccine gave the impression of inducing detectable antibody-based immune responses in subjects.
In the Phase 2 clinical trial involving 600 participants in China, the candidate did not cause any serious side effect and the rate of fever was relatively low compared with other COVID-19 candidates, the paper showed ahead of peer review.
Sinovac wants to verify its vaccine because China is no longer an acceptable site for complex trials due to the low number of new infections.
Reporting through Stanley Widianto and Maikel Jefriando in Jakarta and Roxanne Liu in Beijing; Additional report through Kate Lamb in Sydney; Editing through Sayantani Ghosh and Christopher Cushing
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