Update on Bio Farma's Covid-19 Vaccine Production

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Food and Drugs Monitoring Agency (BPOM) in a House hearing with DPR’s Health Commission on Monday reported the updates of the Covid-19 vaccines that are being processed by state-pharmaceutical firm Bio Farma from raw materials imported from China’s Sinovac. 

According to BPOM chairperson Penny Lukito Bio Farma has two main facilities in ‘Building 21’ and ‘Building 43’ which processes the raw vaccine materials located in Bandung, West Java, with the former building having a production capacity of 100 million doses annually and the latter boasting a 150 million doses annually. 

Indonesia imported readily vaccine vials in the first and second phase of imports while the third up to fifth phase are mainly 35 million doses of raw materials, which has seen 10 million being sent on March 2. 

Apart from processing imported Sinovac vaccines, Bio Farma is also involved in the vaccine trials of Indonesia’s native vaccine development touted as the ‘Merah Putih’ vaccine that is developed by the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology and later produced by Bio Farma. The first batch of vaccine seeds will be sent by Eijkman to Bio Farma in late March.

All of the efforts upon boosting the production of Covid-19 vaccines is to meet the national goal of 1 million daily vaccinations that is hampered by the current availability of readily-used Covid-19 vaccine doses. 

Read: Bio Farma: 806 Health Facilities to Serve Non-subsidized COVID-19 Vaccinations

FAJAR PEBRIANTO