Indonesia has reported that 94% of the 25,374 health workers who had taken the Chinese Sinovac vaccine had been protected from infection by COVID-19 according to Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin in an interview on Tuesday. The workers were tracked until late February. The results are encouraging for the vaccine which performed poorly in Western trials amidst accusations of lack of data and transparency issues.
"We see a very, very drastic drop in hospitalizations and deaths among medical workers," Sadikin said as quoted by NDTV. Indonesia has not reported any special variants of the virus so far. The health workers who participated in the trial were all from Jakarta and had been monitored for 28 days after the second dose.
Sinovac is also being deployed in Brazil where, despite it only showing 50% efficiency in Phase III trials, it is now showing greater efficiency in the testing phase. However, the spokesman for Sinovac in Beijing said the company cannot comment on the Indonesian study until it acquires more details.