Erick Thohir Is Reluctant To Become A Volunteer For The COVID-19 Vaccine Trial

Minister of BUMN, Erick Thohir. (Photo: Ministry of BUMN)

JAKARTA - PT Bio Farma (Persero) as the holding of a pharmaceutical BUMN is currently conducting phase III clinical trials for the COVID-19 vaccine from Sinovac, a company from China. Later, the vaccine will be injected into 1,620 volunteers.

The BUMN Ministry targets that the volunteer trials will be conducted in early September this year. However, BUMN Minister Erick Thohir admitted that he was reluctant to become one of the volunteers for the corona vaccine trial.

Erick reasoned that he wanted to put people who meet the requirements as volunteers. However, he emphasized that this was not because he did not want to be injected with a vaccine during the trial period.

"Why? Oh, if I'm not ethical, it's better to volunteer according to the conditions that have been determined. It's not that you don't want to be injected, huh. As the Minister of SOEs, it's in the back, let the community first and then me. But it's not for fear of being injected," he said. , in a virtual discussion with Kumparan, Friday, 7 August.

Unlike Erick, his spokesperson, Arya Sinulingga, is interested in volunteering. In fact, he had sent all the requirements and was preparing himself.

"I am Arya Sinulingga will register as a volunteer at Bio Farma. I sent my ID card yesterday and I will register soon," said Arya in a statement to the media, Tuesday, July 27.

Arya revealed that the phase II clinical trial had been carried out first in China and had also been tested on humans.

In Indonesia, phase III clinical trials involve volunteers who must meet a number of requirements. Some of the requirements include healthy adults, aged 18 to 59 years, not currently participating in other clinical trials, and never having a history of being infected with the SAR-CoV-2 or COVID-19 virus.

"Then, I also do not have other diseases, so I see that this is a step to become a volunteer," he said.

Arya detailed a number of stages to become a volunteer. After passing through the administrative stage, prospective volunteers will undergo a medical test. Then, volunteers will take a blood sample. After 14 days, volunteers will be given the vaccine. After 14 days, volunteers will be given the vaccine again.

"So there are four research visits that will be carried out on me. This is done so that what is our challenge, how can this vaccine be used as a vaccine to deal with corona," he explained.

As is known, BUMN through PT Bio Farma is completing the phase III clinical trial of the Sinovac vaccine from China. If the implementation is smooth and there are no obstacles, it will produce vaccines and inject 30 to 40 million vaccines in early 2021 into Indonesian society.

The mass injection will later require compact cooperation between the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and Culture, TNI, Polri and the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI).