Merah Putih Vaccine Expected To Be Mass Produced Starting In August

JAKARTA - PT Biotis Pharmaceuticals Indonesia as the developer of the Merah Putih vaccine with Airlangga University hopes to mass-produce the vaccine for COVID-19 in August 2022.

"Starting August (2022) we will start mass releasing products", said PT Biotis Pharmaceuticals President Director FX Sudirman at the MUI Jakarta office as reported by Antara on Thursday, February 10.

Sudirman said pre-clinical trials of the Merah Putih vaccine showed high efficiency and that the first phase of clinical trials was currently underway to check the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

In the first phase of clinical trials targeting 90 people. While the second phase will target about 400 people for vaccine immunogenicity and the third phase clinical trial to test the efficacy of the vaccine will involve around 3,000 people.

In this third stage, it will also be known whether the vaccine can be used as a booster vaccine or as a primary vaccine.

"Regarding the use, the government has allocated the Merah Putih vaccine for several targets and can fulfill the primary vaccine and booster vaccine, both for adults, adolescents and children", he said.

Meanwhile, Health Minister, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, said the Merah Putih vaccine was planned to be used for international donated vaccines to reach several countries on the African continent.

"Because the penetration of vaccine distribution in Africa is rather slow. Many vaccine donations are in the form of Moderna and Pfizer which require logistics with a fairly high temperature of minus 25 to minus 28 degrees Celsius", he said.

Budi emphasized that President Jokowi had agreed to use the Merah Putih vaccine as Indonesia's donation to countries abroad. "So, it is not only used locally in Indonesia but also internationally", he said.

Nevertheless, continued the Minister of Health, what is needed now is the registration process at the World Health Organization (WHO) for clinical trials and boosters. Furthermore, the registration is also required to be used as a donation to Africa.

"It must be ensured that this class of vaccine is at the international level (so it's not just clinical trials), but also to publish as much international research as possible about vaccines, so that the world's researchers can see it", he said.