JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia has approved China’s Sinovac Biotech’s COVID-19 vaccine for its elderly population, the country’s food and drugs authority (BPOM) said in a letter to state-run pharmaceutical company Bio Farma seen by Reuters on Saturday.
The letter showed that Bio Farma has approved the vaccine for those aged 60 and above after ‘taking into account the emergency situation”.
Wiku Adisasmito, spokesman for the country’s COVID-19 task force, confirmed the authenticity of the letter, as did a Bio Farma spokesman.
A BPOM spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Southeast Asian country gave Sinovac’s COVID-19 vaccine its first emergency use approval outside China as the world’s fourth most populous country launches nationwide inoculations.
(Reporting by Stanley Widianto and Maikel Jefriando; writing by Fathin Ungku; editing by Jason Neely)