Coronavirus: For $19, Indonesian vaccine guinea pig a ‘hero’

Newly unemployed and with a wife and baby girl, Karyana was among the first of 1620 volunteers to submit to stage-three trials of a Chinese-developed vaccine.

‘Not scared’ … vaccine volunteer Karyana prays before receiving his vaccine injection this week. Picture: Agvi Firdaus

Newly unemployed and with a wife and baby girl to feed, Karyana was among the first of 1620 volunteers on Tuesday to submit to stage-three trials of a Chinese-developed vaccine Indonesia hopes will end the country’s suffering under the coronavirus pandemic.

The 23-year-old former Bandung Hilton waiter insisted he wasn’t scared: “In fact I feel like a Hollywood hero, like from the movie I Am Legend, or a survivor in a zombie movie,” he joked as he waited in line.

“I’m young and healthy, and this might save people’s lives.”

Still, he prayed before he received the first of two vaccine injections developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech, and admitted money was his primary motivation.

“I’ve been jobless since February and the situation for us is very tight. They said that I will receive around Rp 200,000 ($19) per visit for this trial so that’s money for yesterday, today, after 14 days, and again after six months,” said Karyana who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name.

“I don’t know if they will call us to come in between that time. But it’s good money and it helps whatever little I make from odd jobs currently.”

Sinovac is rolling out the third and final trial stage of its candidate vaccine, known as Coronavac, across the developing world from Indonesia to India, Brazil, Bangladesh and Turkey — countries with large populations and high COVID-19 caseloads — in exchange for promised access to the vaccine within six months should it prove effective.

The third-stage trials involve researchers twice injecting the vaccine or placebo into thousands of people who are then monitored to see whether they encounter the virus and how they react.

The Sinovac trial is one of 26 coronavirus vaccine candidates currently in clinical evaluation globally and — critically for Muslim-majority Indonesia — is halal, which means it does not contain any products (such as pig) forbidden by Islam.

President Joko Widodo said he hoped the trial would be completed by January so Indonesian pharmaceutical giant Bio Farma could immediately begin rolling out production of 250 million doses for the Indonesian population.

Another vaccine candidate, produced specifically from the COVID-19 virus strain that has spread through Indonesia, is being produced domestically by the country’s Eijkman Institute, which hopes to have it completed by mid-next year.

Kusnandi Rusmil, who heads Indonesia’s vaccine trial research team, was hopeful the stage-three Sinovac trial would lead to a successful vaccine regardless of the results in other trial countries.

‘Hopeful’ … Indonesian research head Kusnandi Rusmil. Picture: Agvi Firdaus

“At this point we already know that it produces the desired immune response, so we will be looking for this across the 1000-plus phase-three volunteers,” he said.

“Of course we hope the trials in India and Brazil and other countries go smoothly too, because that would mean this vaccine is safe for the global population. But if they face any issues while the trial goes smoothly in Indonesia, we will go ahead because it means the vaccine is safe for the Indonesian population.”

Indonesia has officially recorded about 130,000 cases and close to 5900 deaths, though epidemiologists agree the figure is likely far higher than that because of the country’s low testing rates.

It still has one of the highest mortality rates in the region, though no longer has the highest infection rate after a surge of cases in The Philippines forced President Rodrigo Duterte to impose a second lockdown on the capital, Manila, and surrounding areas.

With his country now formally in recession and COVID-19 cases topping 140,000, Mr Duterte accepted an offer from Moscow this week to supply a Russian-developed vaccine that became the first in the world to be granted domestic regulatory approval on Tuesday.

Mr Duterte, 75, said this week he would happily be a guinea pig.

“I will tell President Putin that I have huge trust in your studies in combating COVID and I believe the vaccine that you have produced is really good for humanity,” he said. “I can be the first they experiment on.”