Indonesia approves the use of the Sinovac vaccine … and confirms that its effectiveness is 65.3%

Jakarta – (Reuters):
The Food and Drug Control Authority in Indonesia approved, on Monday, the emergency use of the Chinese company Sinovac Biotec anti-Coronavirus, to be the first country other than China to grant regulatory approval for this vaccine.

This comes at a time when the fourth largest country in the world in terms of population, and home to about 270 million people, launched nationwide vaccination campaigns to curb the rapid increase in cases and deaths due to disease.

Experts in the public health sector say that the lack of adequate data and the different rates of effectiveness of the vaccine reported by different countries may undermine public confidence in it.

The Food and Drug Control Authority said that the approval came after preliminary data from advanced human trials showed that the vaccine was 65.3 percent effective. This percentage is lower than that of Brazil (78 percent) and Turkey (91.25 percent), which have not yet started the initial vaccination campaigns.

Benny K. “These results meet the requirements of the World Health Organization, which require an effectiveness of at least 50 percent,” Lokito, director of the authority, told a press conference.