Avoid Counterfeiting, Bio Farma Puts Barcodes On COVID-19 Vaccine Bottles

Illustration. (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - PT Bio Farma's Director of Digital Healthcare Soleh Udin Al Ayubi said that the vaccination process will be carried out strictly by utilizing digital technology. This is to avoid counterfeiting the COVID-19 vaccine product.

Bio Farma, as the holding for pharmaceutical SOEs, said Soleh, would include a barcode on each type of vaccine, both small and large box packaging. The barcode for each product to the vaccine packaging will be integrated with the barcode of each vaccine recipient community.

"There is some news about counterfeit vaccines, we will avoid attaching the barcode. So just a scan will show the details," he said in a webinar, Tuesday, November 24.

The information in the barcode contains the COVID-19 vaccine identification number, expiration date, serial number, and so on. In the later vaccination process, said Soleh, in addition to barcode scans, health workers will also scan community identity cards (KTP).

"Each vaccine bottle, for example, we will have 100 million Sinovac vaccines, each bottle contains 10 doses, so there will be 10 million vaccine bottles, each vaccine bottle has a barcode," he explained.

Not only on product packaging, Soleh said, cardboard boxes and fleets used to distribute vaccines would also have barcodes attached.

"When the box is put in the truck the truck has a barcode too, so we know how many vaccines on the road the truck is carrying, then we know what ID numbers," he said.

In addition, said Soleh, the pharmaceutical BUMN holding also implemented a strategy to prevent the hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines by irresponsible parties, especially for independent vaccines. You do this through the pre-order system, so that it is based on real demand in the field.

"Then the process for pre-orders, this is important for distribution so that we will know what the real demand is in the field. This demand is very important because the vaccine is very limited. One clinic cannot say, I requested 100 million doses without real demand. like this we can minimize hoarding, "he said.