TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indra Rudiansyah (29), an Indonesian doctoral student at The Jenner Institute, on Saturday spoke about the blood clotting side effects associated with the Covid-19 AstraZeneca vaccine. He is one of two Indonesians involved in the creation of the vaccine through the immune response research of 20,000 clinical trial participants from March 2020 to March this year.

He stated that the volunteers during the extensive development phase showed zero cases of blood clots during that period and based on the trials, the vaccine was deemed safe with side effects in tolerable levels such as fever, pain in the injection spot, and nausea, which are all temporary.

“The blood clot phenomenon emerged after the vaccine was used in-mass across the globe, with a frequency of one in a million. This is very rare,” said Indra in a virtual interview with Tempo Magazine and NET TV on Saturday, July 31.

He believes it is ironic to blame the vaccination for the blood clot finding as the team of researchers are still looking for the link between the health condition and vaccine dose that was given. Moreover, he said, the frequency of blood clot emerging in unwanted areas such as the lungs or brain is still higher if someone gets infected by Covid-19, let alone the vaccination.

However, he asserts that every side effect found by every AstraZeneca vaccination is looked into. Rudiansyah - who has recently moved focus to a malaria vaccine program - assures that Sarah Gilbert and the AstraZeneca vaccine development team at The Jenner Institute are not standing still receiving these reports.

“Every drug has its side effects and depends on how we mitigate them,” he said.

Indra Rudiansyah is a researcher from Bio Farma who studied his higher education at the Bandung Institute Technology (ITB). The LPDP doctoral scholarship recipient at the Oxford University since 2018 has joined the development of a pre-erythrocytic malaria vaccine at The Jenner Institute,

The development of the AstraZeneca vaccine briefly stopped him from his main research for one whole year as the institute decided to refocus each and every researcher to the research and production of a Covid-19 vaccine last year.

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ZACHARIAS WURAGIL