Indonesia became the first country outside China to approve the emergency use of a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Chinese doctor Sinovac Biotech Ltd., despite findings that place the candidate’s effectiveness among the lowest for new coronavirus vaccines.
The Indonesian Food and Drug Administration said on Monday that a late-stage clinical trial in the big city of Bandung showed that the Sinovac CoronaVac vaccine is 65.3% effective. This compares with the results of clinical trials in Brazil last week, which show that the vaccine had a 78% efficacy rate.
The trial in Indonesia showed that CoronaVac is safe, with participants experiencing only minor side effects such as fatigue and fever, according to Penny Lukito, head of Indonesia’s National Agency for Medicines and Food Control. “We hope that 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 regulators consider necessary for widespread use. Western vaccines developed by Moderna Inc. and jointly by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE reported that their vaccines are over 90% more effective; another developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca PLC was at least 62% efficient, according to the team.
Brazilian authorities have not yet approved CoronaVac for use, although the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro has dropped its previous criticisms of Chinese vaccines and agreed to buy up to 100 million photos of the vaccine.