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Judul : Indonesia on track for Jan. 13 vaccination drive

Nama Media : thejakartapost.com

Tanggal : 09 Januari 2021

Halaman/URL : https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2021/01/09/indonesia-on-
track-for-jan-13-vaccination-drive.html

Tipe Media : Media Online

Indonesia is on track to roll out its COVID-
19 vaccination campaign next week, just as
the country extends its record-breaking
streak of highest new daily confirmed cases
for a third consecutive day.

The highly anticipated vaccination drive,
which President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has
ordered to commence after he takes the
first jab of the CoronaVac vaccine on Jan.
13, looks likely to proceed after the Food
and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) indicated it would keep to the agreed timetable
to authorize use of the vaccine.

BPOM head Penny Lukito expressed optimism on Friday that her agency would be
able to issue emergency use authorization (EUA) for Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech’s
candidate vaccine before Wednesday.
She was also quick to dismiss allegations that Jokowi’s announcement would “bind
BPOM to issuing the EUA on a certain date”, saying that the plan did in fact line up
with BPOM’s own timeline and that it was waiting for the full set of interim data to be
compiled and analyzed.

"We're grateful that we have growing conviction up to this day so that [...] it can be
confirmed that the [EUA] will be issued before Jan. 13," she told a virtual press briefing.
Penny explained that the agency had employed a rolling submission of interim data
from ongoing late-stage clinical trials of the candidate vaccine in Bandung, West Java,
rejecting any claim that it was a “sudden” forced decision.

BPOM had received half of the trial’s data by Thursday and was expected to acquire
the complete dataset on Friday. Read also: How CoronaVac's efficacy, new virus
strains will affect Indonesia's vaccination blitz "We'll analyze it internally first before we
conduct final deliberations with the national committee on drug evaluation specifically
on COVID-19 vaccines, which also involves ITAGI [Indonesian Technical Advisory
Group on Immunization], clinicians on a wider scale and epidemiologists – all so that
we can issue [the EUA] in the next few days," she said.

In addition to the Bandung data, Penny said the agency would also consider interim
data from the larger phase three trials of the same candidate vaccine in Turkey and