Indonesia has signed agreements on 100 million vaccine procurements with US biotechnology company Novavax and British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, a government minister said on Wednesday. Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the agreements were carried out by Indonesian pharmaceutical company Indofarma with Novavax to procure 50 million doses of vaccine, and domestic vaccine manufacturing corporation Bio Farma with AstraZeneca to provide another 50 million doses. "Purchasing the vaccines from the two big companies in the world provides sufficient variety for the Indonesian people and we can use them later," Sadikin told a virtual press conference. According to the agreements, Sadikin hoped that the vaccines would arrive in Indonesia in the second quarter of next year. Indonesia's Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said that additional 1.8 million doses of vaccine were expected to arrive Thursday from Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech. "With this addition, the Sinovac vaccine that arrives in Indonesia will be 3 million doses," Marsudi added. The government hopes the process of the agreements on all vaccine procurements can be completed within two weeks. After that, the government will formulate a way to distribute the vaccines throughout the Indonesian archipelago. Indonesia is targeting to get around 426 million doses of vaccines to achieve herd immunity and break the chain of COVID-19 transmissions. The first period of vaccination will be from January to April 2021, for inoculating 1.3 million medical workers, 17.4 million public workers, and 21.5 million elderly people. The second period will run from April 2021 to March 2022.
