Indonesia's Bio Farma says interim data for Sinovac vaccine shows up to 97% efficacy

Indonesia's state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma said on Tuesday that interim data on trials it was conducting on vaccines produced by the Chinese company Sinovac showed up to 97% efficacy.

"Our clinical trial team found, within one month, that the interim data shows up to 97% for its efficacy," said Iwan Setiawan, a spokesman for Bio Farma, at a news conference.

He did not elaborate whether the interim result was from a late-stage clinical trial, but another Bio Farma spokesman told Reuters later that the company is still gathering data on efficacy from ongoing Phase 3 trial.

Sinovac had said earlier that 97% of healthy adults receiving lower dosage participating in its Phase 1-2 trial showed antibody-related immune response after taking its COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac..

A Sinovac spokesman said on Tuesday the company had not received efficacy readings from Phase 3 clinical trials.

Brazil's Butantan Institute biomedical center, which is running a Phase 3 trial of CoronaVac in the country, said last week that Sinovac was expected to publish efficacy results from its vaccine trials by Dec 15.

Bio Farma did not provide data on how many participants got infected during the trial that involves 1,600 people.

Iwan said Bio Farma would wait for full results and it expected Indonesia's food and drug agency to issue emergency use authorization in late January before mass vaccination could start.