Indonesia became the first country in China to give emergency approval to a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Chinese drug maker Sinovac Biotech Ltd., despite findings that place the candidate’s effectiveness among the lowest. for new coronavirus vaccines.
The Indonesian food and drug agency said Monday that a final-stage clinical trial in the large city of Bandung showed Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine was 65.3% effective. This compares with the results of clinical trials in Brazil last week showing that the vaccine had an effectiveness rate of 78%.
The trial in Indonesia showed that CoronaVac was safe, with participants experiencing only minor side effects such as fatigue and fever, according to Penny Lukito, the head of Indonesia’s National Drug and Food Control Agency. “We hope that vaccines against Covid-19 will be one of the factors in overcoming this pandemic,” he said.
A rate of 65% exceeds the 50% threshold that the World Health Organization and many regulatory authorities consider necessary for widespread use. Western vaccines developed by Moderna Inc. and jointly by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE have reported that their vaccines are more than 90% effective; another developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca PLC was at least 62% effective, according to the team.
Brazilian authorities have not yet approved the use of CoronaVac, although the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro has withdrawn from its previous criticism of Chinese vaccines and agreed to buy up to 100 million shots of the vaccine. .