Indonesia’s state-owned Kimia Farma to start selling vaccines to public

 

A woman receives a shot of the Sinovac vaccine during an inoculation drive at a stadium in Bekasi last week. (AP pic)

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s state-owned pharmaceutical company PT Kimia Farma will start selling vaccines to the public on Monday as the country seeks to accelerate inoculations and achieve herd immunity by the end of the year.

The company will use doses by Sinopharm Group Co that are currently available for private programmes, said Bambang Heriyanto, a spokesman for PT Bio Farma, the parent company of Kimia Farma.

Apart from business entities, private health facilities can now also offer shots for individuals using vaccines that are not used by the government programme, he said at a press briefing today.

“The aim is to expand access to the public to get their first dose of vaccine,” Heriyanto said, adding that getting such shots are an option for people who haven’t been covered by the government programme yet and who aren’t registered with companies that carry out private vaccinations.

Kimia Farma will begin selling the shots in eight clinics in several cities including Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya and Bali in the first stage.

The company has prepared 5,000 doses for each clinic, with a total vaccination capacity of around 1,700 people per day, according to the president director of PT Kimia Farma Diagnostika, Agus Candra.

The price of the vaccine is estimated at 879,140 rupiah (US$60.5) for two complete doses, as already regulated by the Ministry of Health.

Southeast Asia’s largest economy is struggling to contain a resurgence of infections driven by the delta variant that has overwhelmed its medical system.

The government’s target is to vaccinate 181.5 million by the end of the year. While it has been meeting its goal of giving out 1 million doses each day in July, less than 10% of its target has received the complete vaccine program. - FMT