Erick Thohir Hunts The COVID-19 Vaccine To South Korea

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

JAKARTA - Chief Executive of the Committee for Handling COVID-19 and National Economic Recovery (PCPEN) Erick Thohir is visiting South Korea (South Korea). Erick's arrival was to discuss cooperation in developing a vaccine for the Sar-COV-2 or COVID-19 virus.

Special Staff to the Minister of BUMN, Arya Sinulingga, said that the government has collaborated in developing vaccines with a number of countries. Erick's visit to this country is in order to increase the stock of vaccines for domestic needs.

"This is Pak Erick Thohir, now returning to South Korea, this is also part of these steps. Yesterday he left for South Korea," he said, Thursday, September 24.

This vaccine development cooperation is carried out through state-owned companies. For example, PT Bio Farma (Persero) is currently carrying out the third phase of the COVID-19 vaccine trial. The state-owned pharmaceutical company is working with Chinese vaccine manufacturer Sinovac in vaccine development.

Until 2021, Sinovac is committed to supplying 210 million doses of vaccine raw material to Biofarma. Arya said Biofarma stated that it could produce 350 million doses in 2021.

Then, PT Kimia Farma Tbk and PT Indofarma Tbk (Persero) with a health technology company from the United Arab Emirates, G42. Artificial Intelligence (AI) -based UAE healthcare companies to bring in as many as 10 million vaccine products by year's end.

Other collaborations are also being explored with Genexine, CanSino, and AstraZeneca, the government is exploring partnerships with other pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Novafax. Added to this is a multilateral cooperation mechanism with Unicef within the CORVAX Facility in the form of guarantees for the speed, availability and delivery of vaccines.

Arya said the government did not only rely on vaccines in collaboration with various countries in the world. However, it also encourages domestically made vaccines.

Minister of Research and Technology (Menristek) Bambang Brodjonegoro in collaboration with Eijkman is also working on the Red and White vaccine. This vaccine will be tested in clinical trials next year and is expected to be produced in 2022.

"We know this vaccine is our need, because our need is very large for vaccines, and it does not mean that this vaccine can last a lifetime, so inevitably we will focus on producing domestically made vaccines," he said.