Indonesia to get US vaccine donations amid COVID emergency

Four million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine from the US are heading to Indonesia, the US national security adviser has informed the Indonesian foreign minister, as the country battles record coronavirus infections and deaths that forced an emergency lockdown starting on Saturday.

In a call with Retno Marsudi on Friday, Jake Sullivan said the doses would be shipped via the COVAX global vaccine sharing programme “as soon as possible,” a White House statement said.

Four million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine from the US are heading to Indonesia, the US national security adviser has informed the Indonesian foreign minister, as the country battles record coronavirus infections and deaths that forced an emergency lockdown starting on Saturday.

In a call with Retno Marsudi on Friday, Jake Sullivan said the doses would be shipped via the COVAX global vaccine sharing programme “as soon as possible,” a White House statement said.

“Sullivan highlighted the importance the Biden-Harris administration places on Indonesia, Southeast Asia and ending the pandemic more broadly and pledged continued support and high-level engagement,” the statement said.

The nation has recorded record new infections on eight of the past 12 days, including 25,830 new cases on Friday, and a record 539 deaths.

In Jakarta province alone, Governor Anies Baswedan said in a press conference on Friday that active cases have already reached 78,000 from 27,000 in February.

Anies said that if the trend continues, the active cases could hit 100,000 in a few days.

Since the pandemic last year, Indonesia has reported a total of 2,228,938 cases and 59,534 deaths.

The surge in new cases and deaths has prompted President Joko Widodo to declare emergency restrictions on movement starting on Saturday in the island of Java and Bali. The lockdown is effective until July 20.

Competing vaccine diplomacy

Penny K Lukito, the chief of Indonesia’s food and drug agency, said earlier on Friday it authorised the Moderna vaccine for emergency use.

Meanwhile, the country’s health minister also announced on Friday that Indonesia is planning to vaccinate under-18s with the coronavirus mRNA shot jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the island of Java, home to about half of the country’s more than 270 million people, was where most outbreaks with the highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19 occurred. The variant was first identified in India.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is seen as 84 percent effective, even with the Delta variant, after two doses, but only 34 percent effective with only one dose, according to a report by the US website NBC Boston.

Moderna also announced on Tuesday that its vaccine showed promise against the Delta variant, based on a study conducted on blood serum from eight participants obtained one week after they received the second dose of the vaccine.

The company said the vaccine was far more effective in producing antibodies against the Delta variant than it was against the Beta variant first identified in South Africa.