Indonesia became the first country outside China to approve a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Chinese drugmaker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. developed, despite findings that place the candidate’s efficacy among the lowest for new coronavirus vaccines.
The Food and Drug Administration in Indonesia said on Monday that a late-stage clinical trial in the large city of Bandung showed that Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine was 65.3% effective. This is compared to the clinical trial results from Brazil last week, which show that the vaccine has an efficacy rate of 78%.
According to Penny Lukito, head of the National Agency for Drugs and Food Control in Indonesia, it appears that CoronaVac was safe, while participants experienced only minor side effects such as fatigue and fever. “Hopefully, vaccines for Covid-19 will be one of the factors in overcoming this pandemic,” she said.
A rate of 65% exceeds the 50% threshold that the World Health Organization and many government authorities deem necessary for widespread use. Western vaccines developed by Moderna Inc. and jointly by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE reported that their vaccines are more than 90% effective; another developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca PLC was at least 62% effective, according to the team.
Authorities in Brazil have yet to approve CoronaVac for use, although President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has withdrawn from its previous criticism of Chinese vaccines and agreed to buy up to 100 million shots of the vaccine.