Erick Thohir's Advice For Bio Farma On COVID-19 Vaccinations: Don't Fail

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

JAKARTA - BUMN Minister Erick Thohir asked PT Bio Farma (Persero) to increase its capabilities and spur production capacity readiness, cold chain security and distribution to support the COVID-19 vaccination program.

"I instruct Bio Farma, which has a strategic role in supporting the COVID-19 vaccination program to continue to strengthen the preparation of vaccine production capacity, cold chain handling, and distribution. It must run smoothly and without obstacles because all Indonesian people have high hopes for the vaccination program. This nationwide was successful, "said Erick Thohir in Bandung, West Java, quoted from Antara, Thursday, January 7.

According to Erick, Bio Farma is ready to monitor the movement of vaccines that have been sent to 34 provinces. Erick also appreciated the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) to monitor production, temperature in storage areas to delivery trucks, and vaccine distribution accurately and in real-time.

"Not only matters of supply and production. What is also an important mission of Bio Farma is to maintain quality and timeliness until the last shipment to all provinces. Don't fail. This is for the sake of Indonesia," he said.

Accompanied by the President Director of PT Bio Farma (Persero) Honesti Basyir, Erick Thohir reviewed the command center - a place to monitor production, storage and distribution data in real time based on Internet of Things (IoT) technology, production facilities and storage of the COVID-19 vaccine at Bio Farma.

By utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT) technology owned by the BUMN Pharmaceutical Holding Bio Farma, such as 2-dimensional barcodes, GPS, room temperature sensors for vaccine storage at Bio Farma and the distribution fleet, will run a behavior sensor system that monitors fleet movements, vehicle conditions, and Vaccine delivery personnel, whether during the delivery of vaccines starting in the Bio Farma Distribution Building in real time, to the end point of delivery to the Pharmaceutical Warehouse of the Provincial, City and District Health Offices, or Health Facilities.

Bio Farma received an assignment from the government, in this case the Ministry of Health, to provide vaccines for 2020-2022.

Until now, the government has placed an order or firm order for 329.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from various international pharmaceutical companies and through the COVAX Facility. The pharmaceutical BUMN holding will also play an important role in clinical trials and the production of red and white vaccines.

In addition, Bio Farma is also preparing the capacity to produce 100 million doses of multiplatform COVID-19 vaccine per year for the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which will then be distributed to various countries in the world. This production is targeted to start at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021 or the first quarter of 2022.

"I ask the Bio Farma team to be solid and give their totality to support this vaccination program. We hope that the maximum efforts made by BUMN can accelerate the realization of Recovered Health, an Awakened Economy," said Erick.