Indonesia's Bio Farma says not yet able to determine Sinovac vaccine efficacy
Indonesia's state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma said today that interim data on trials it was conducting on vaccines produced by the Chinese company Sinovac showed up to 97 percent efficacy.
"Our clinical trial team found, within one month, that the interim data shows up to 97 percent for its efficacy," said Iwan Setiawan, a spokesperson for Bio Farma, at a news conference...
- UPDATED 11.15PM | Added latest update from Bio Farma
Indonesia's state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma said late on Tuesday the efficacy of a Covid-19 vaccine developed by China's Sinovac could not yet be determined, after previously saying that interim data showed 97 percent efficacy.
In a statement, Bio Farma said the interim report from the Phase III trial is expected to be available in January.
Bambang Heriyanto, an official at Bio Farma, said efficacy cannot be determined at this time, and it was necessary to wait for complete data.
Bio Farma had said earlier on Tuesday that clinical trial results showed the vaccine has 97 percent efficacy.
Sinovac said last month that 97 percent of healthy adults in one of the groups that received two shots of a lower dosage in its Phase I-II trial showed antibody-related immune response after taking its experimental Covid-19 vaccine.
A Sinovac spokesman said on Tuesday the company had not received efficacy readings from its CoronaVac Phase III clinical trials.
Brazil's Butantan Institute biomedical centre, which is also running a Phase III trial of CoronaVac, said last week that Sinovac was expected to publish efficacy results from its vaccine trials by Dec. 15.
Bio Farma said that no one from its more than 1,600 volunteers showed serious side effects.
- Reuters
