Jakarta (Indonesia Window) – Indonesian state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma will start production of Sinovac vaccine against the coronavirus on February 13, and is expected to be completed on March 20, 2021.

The production of the COVID-19 vaccine will use 10 million doses of raw materials from the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech Ltd. The raw materials arrived at Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Banten province’s district of Tangerang on Tuesday morning.

In addition, Sinovac Biotech also sent 1 million doses of overfills in a semi-finished form, which is an extra volume to anticipate the production process, according to Bio Farma's COVID-19 Vaccination spokesperson, Bambang Heriyanto, in a press statement when welcoming the arrival of raw materials at Soekarno-Hatta Airport.

"The raw materials we have received today (Feb. 2) are part of the 140 million doses of raw materials imported from Sinovac for 2021. The delivery will be carried out in stages until July 2021," Bambang said.

He added, the delivery of the Sinovac vaccine was initially planned until November 2021. "The schedule is moved forward until July 2021," Bambang said.

He explained that the 15 million doses of the first phase of Sinovac vaccine raw materials, which arrived on January 12, had been processed by Bio Farma, and the production was expected to be completed on February 11.

Bambang said all raw materials that have been processed into ready-to-use vaccine should go through a series of stringent quality control tests conducted by Bio Farma’s laboratory and the National Agency of Food and Drug Control.

"The agency will issue the results in the form of lot release. "The vaccine produced by Bio Farma and the first batch is expected to be completed in the second week of February 2021," he said.

The post-production process and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine should also be carried out by applying the good drug distribution method along the distribution channel.

"The distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine should maintain the quality of the vaccine. Bio Farma uses an integrated Vaccine Distribution Management System," said Bambang.

He added that the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Bio Farma has a different packaging from the ready-to-use COVID-19 vaccine from Sinovac, but has the same quality.

Reporting by Indonesia Window