Indonesia satisfied with effectiveness of Chinese vaccine

BEIJING — Indonesia's government says it is satisfied with the effectiveness of the Chinese coronavirus vaccine it has been using.

Siti Nadia Tarmizi, a spokesperson for Indonesia's COVID-19 vaccine program, said Monday that the World Health Organization had found the Chinese vaccines had met requirements by being more than 50 percent effective. She noted that clinical trials in Indonesia for the vaccine from Chinese drugmaker Sinovac showed it was 65 percent effective.

"It means ... the ability to form antibodies in our bodies is still very good," she said.

Researchers who conducted Sinovac's clinical trials in Brazil released new data Monday that confirmed the company's previously announced efficacy rate of about 50 percent. The paper, which was published on a website for scientists and has not yet been peer reviewed, showed that the vaccine was 50.7 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19 cases and much stronger against severe ones.

China has distributed hundreds of millions of doses of domestically made vaccines abroad.

Tarmizi said Indonesia would wait to see the results of any clinical trials before considering mixing vaccines.

"We are going to wait, waiting for the clinical trial to ensure the idea or innovation will have better effectiveness, immunogenicity, and efficacy level compared to the current condition," she said.

Experts say mixing vaccines, or sequential immunization, might boost effectiveness. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of the Pfizer and the AstraZeneca vaccines.

China currently has five vaccines in use in its mass immunization campaign, three inactivated-virus vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm, a one-shot vaccine from CanSino, and a recombinant protein subunit vaccine.

The effectiveness of the vaccines range from just over 50 percent to 79 percent, based on what the companies have said.

Globally, public health experts have said that any vaccine that is 50 percent effective would be useful, and many governments have been eager to use Chinese vaccines.