Vaccine Supply For Gotong Royong Vaccination Program, Bio Farma: 1 Million Doses Will Arrive In June

JAKARTA - PT Bio Farma (Persero) recorded the supply of COVID-19 vaccine from Sinopharm manufacturer, China, amounting to 1 million doses will arrive in Indonesia in June 2021. Later, the vaccine will be used in the gotong royong vaccination program.

President Director of Bio Farma, Honesti Basyir said as many as 3.5 million doses of Casino vaccine, the production of CanSino Biologics is targeted to arrive in July-September this year. He said that number will increase in the fourth quarter of 2021 by 2 million doses.

In aggregate, honesti said, the agreement to procure the COVID-19 vaccine between the government and CanSino Biologics is as much as 50 million doses.

"We have already made an agreement with CanSino that the vaccine that we will give from them is 50 million doses. Where, the schedule is 3.5 million doses will be sent from July to September (2021) and 2 million will be delivered in the fourth quarter of this year," he said in a hearing meeting with Commission IX of the House of Representatives, Thursday, May 20.

Honesti said the process of vaccination gotong royong has been running since May 18, 2021. In its implementation, the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) stipulated that the CanSino and Sinopharm vaccines are only used in such self-vaccination.

Therefore, Bio Farma appointed one of the members of Holding BUMN Farmasi, PT Kimia Farma (Persero) Tbk, as the party that distributes both types of vaccines.

Just for information, Kimia Farma has conducted a cooperation contract between the two global pharmaceutical manufacturers. For Sinopharm, the total has been compared to 7.5 million doses. This amount will be sent until August 2021.

"And there are also 7.5 million more doses that we can carry out executions if we still need to vaccinate gotong royong. So we've contacted 7.5 million doses," he said.

To date, honesti said, there have been 199 corporations involved in mutual vaccination. The number consists of 163,000 clusters of private companies and 36 from state-owned enterprises. Meanwhile, related to the distribution of Sinopharm vaccine for gotong royong vaccination reached 69,730 doses.

"We have given vaccinations to all companies involved in this gotong royong vaccination," he explained.

Furthermore, honesti said, it hopes that in this first stage, 500,000 doses of vaccine for gotong royong vaccination program can be implemented as soon as possible.

"So in June we can already give it to the corporation," he said.