Bio Farma and the Pursuit of Coronavirus Vaccine

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - State-owned pharmaceutical firm PT Bio Farma is currently approaching foreign institutions to obtain the vaccine for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). One of them is Europe’s Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

Bio Farma president-director Honesti Basyir on Tuesday elaborated on the situation in a hearing with House of Representatives (DPR) SOEs commission. “They are now at the vaccine discovery stage in research institutions and would then be prepared to be produced to enter clinical tests,” said Basyir. 

Currently, Bio Farma has already sent a proposal requesting to be involved in CEPI’s vaccine clinical tests, trial centers, and capacity building. Basyir claims that if all runs smoothly, Indonesia could potentially obtain the vaccine in the third quarter of 2020 to be tested on human subjects. 

“[However], this all depends on the processes at CEPI,” he said. 

Apart from CEPI, Bio Farma has also approached Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac that claims to have a batch of vaccines ready for clinical tests. Basyir said that his company is negotiating its way to have Indonesia appointed as the production base for the vaccines. 

At the same time, an Indonesian coronavirus vaccine consortium is also in the chase to discover the vaccine before the COVID-19 takes more Indonesian lives. The consortium comprises Bio Farma, Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Research and Technology, Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology, and a number of universities. 

Bio Farma projects to develop seed vaccines by the end of 2020 and undergo its phase 1 clinical tests in the first quarter of 2022. 

FAJAR PEBRIANTO