China's Sinovac launches Phase 3 trial for COVID-19 vaccine in Indonesia

Bandung: Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Tuesday said the country hoped to start producing coronavirus vaccines by January if late-stage human trials prove successful.

Widodo was in Bandung, West Java province to launch the phase three human trial for a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd and Indonesian state-owned peer Bio Farma, which will involve as many as 1,620 patients. Sinovac's Indonesia trial comes as Southeast Asia's most populous country grapples with spiking infection numbers, with over 127,000 cases recorded as of Tuesday. The trial has so far recruited 1,215 people and will last six months.

The candidate, known as CoronaVac, is among a few potential vaccines that have entered late-stage trials for a large-scale study to gather proof of efficacy for regulatory approval. In Sinovac's mid-stage trial involving 600 participants in China, the rate of fever in patients was relatively lower than other COVID-19 candidates including one from AstraZeneca, the study showed ahead of peer review.

Sinovac is testing its vaccine abroad because China is no longer a satisfactory site for late-stage trials due to the low number of new infection cases.