Minister Of Health: Half-Dose Heterolog Booster For Safety And Operations

Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin/DOK ANTARA

JAKARTA - Minister of Health, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, stated the reason for the government to provide a half-dose heterologous booster vaccine for safety and ease of operation in the field.

"This heterologous vaccine has been studied abroad a lot and why is this a preference, because it provides 'multiple protection', so the type of antibody which is then injected with a heterologous booster will be richer than if it were homologous", said Budi Gunadi Sadikin, quoted by Antara on Tuesday, January 18th.

Budi said the United States was the country that had researched and implemented half-dose of Moderna. "Because indeed Moderna has a high incidence of post-immunization co-occurrence (AEFI). So we see that being given half the dose will be much safer", he said.

Budi said the half-dose heterologous booster policy also took into account recommendations from the Indonesian Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (ITAGI) and clinical trials from a consortium of professors at the University of Padjadjaran and the University of Indonesia and had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (BPOM).

"After we saw that, on average, the primary vaccine was probably 100-200, the antibody titer was very high. Once he was injected with a half dose of the booster, it rose to a level of 7,500 to 8,000. If we remember that convalescent plasma protects at level 250", he said.

Giving a full dose of booster vaccine, said Budi, increases the interval of increasing antibody titers by an average of 500. "So we see that if we provide protection far above that, the difference of 500 is not too significant", he said.

The next reason is the operational ease of the vaccinators in the field in choosing the dose of the booster vaccine.

"We also look at the operational issues, so if there is a half-dose heterologous vaccine, but there is also a single dose, we see that in operation it will be more difficult", he said.