Indonesia approves emergency use of China's Zifivax COVID-19 vaccine

JAKARTA, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia's drug and food authority BPOM said Thursday it has issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Zifivax COVID-19 vaccine produced by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Anhui Zhifei Longcom.

"Today, BPOM again announces that we have approved a COVID-19 vaccine product under the trade name Zifivax which was developed with a recombinant protein sub-unit platform," BPOM's head Penny Lukito told a virtual press conference.

Lukito explained that the Zifivax vaccine has passed the third phase of clinical trials with 28,500 subjects in Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Ecuador, and China.

In Indonesia, the third phase of the clinical trial involved around 4,000 people aged between 18 and 59 years old.

The clinical trial concluded that the efficacy of the Zifivax vaccine reached 81.71 percent after seven days of injections and 81.4 percent after 14 days.

Zifivax is also effective against the new variants of the SARS CoV-2 virus, namely Alfa (92.93 percent), Gamma (100 percent), Delta (77.47 percent), and Kappa (90.0 percent).

This is the tenth vaccine that has received an emergency use permit from the Indonesian government.