Coronavirus: Sinovac shot causes ‘drastic drop’ in deaths, infections among Indonesian health workers; World Economic Forum to go ahead with Singapore meeting

Indonesia found that Sinovac protected 100 per cent of 25,374 health workers from death, 96 per cent from hospitalisation and 94 per cent from infection

Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum plans to go ahead with its annual meeting in Singapore this August despite a jump in coronavirus cases in the city state

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A doctor shows a bottle of the Sinovac vaccine in Jakarta before receiving a dose of it, as Indonesia began its mass vaccination drive for Covid-19 in January. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:16am, 12 May 2021Updated: 10:12am, 12 May 2021

Sinovac Biotech Ltd’s vaccine is wiping out Covid-19 among health workers in Indonesia, an encouraging sign for the dozens of developing countries reliant on the controversial Chinese shot, which performed far worse than Western vaccines in clinical trials.

Indonesia tracked 25,374 health workers in capital city Jakarta for 28 days after they received their second dose and found that the vaccine protected 100 per cent of them from death and 96 per cent from hospitalisation as soon as seven days after, said Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin in an interview on Tuesday. The workers were tracked until late February.

Sadikin also said that 94 per cent of the workers had been protected against infection – an extraordinary result that goes beyond what was measured in the shot’s numerous clinical trials – though it is unclear if the workers were uniformly screened to detect asymptomatic carriers.

A motorbike taxi driver receives a dose of the Sinovac Biotech vaccine on April 30 at a drive-through vaccination station in Jakarta. Photo: Reuters

“We see a very, very drastic drop,” in hospitalisation and deaths among medical workers, Sadikin said. It is not known what strain of the coronavirus Sinovac’s shot worked against in Indonesia, but the country has not flagged any major outbreaks driven by variants of concern.

The data adds to signs out of Brazil that the Sinovac shot is more effective than it proved in the testing phase, which was beset by divergent efficacy rates and questions over data transparency. Results from its biggest Phase III trial in Brazil put the shot known as CoronaVac’s efficacy at just above 50 per cent, the lowest among all first-generation Covid-19 vaccines.