A new study conducted by the Indonesian Health Ministry has showed that China's Sinovac vaccine was proven to effectively protect those aged above 60 years old from having COVID-19 symptoms and from mortality caused by the disease.
The ministry's study was aimed at examining the effectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine, and measuring how well it works when given to the elderly in the community outside of clinical trials.
The Sinovac vaccine, also known as the CoronaVac, has an efficacy rate of 65.3 percent as announced by the country's Drug and Food Control Agency (BPOM) in January for its emergency use authorization (EUA).
Indonesia began its massive COVID-19 vaccination program using the Sinovac vaccine in mid-January. Between March 4 and 29, about 40,000 people belonging to the elderly group had received their complete vaccinations, according to the ministry.
The review, which was published last Friday, based the results on nearly 87,000 elderly people in the national capital Jakarta during March and April.
It focused on those having received the first and second doses of the Sinovac vaccine, and those having not been vaccinated with no records of positive swab tests, also called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.
The study found that two shots of the Sinovac vaccine were 85 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 symptomatic illness, 92 percent effective against hospitalization, and 95 percent effective against mortality caused by the disease.
Meanwhile, the effectiveness of a single shot to prevent symptomatic illness among the elderly was 35 percent.
In May, the ministry published a study on the effectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine on medical workers.
Looking at about 128,000 healthcare workers between January and March, the review showed that the vaccine was 98 percent effective in reducing the number of deaths among them due to the COVID-19 infections.
The Southeast Asian biggest economy has received COVID-19 vaccines from a number of foreign vaccine producers. Sinovac has become the major vaccine in the archipelago.
Indonesia has given the first vaccination shots to at least 51.18 million people, and the second shots to 24.48 million people as of Monday, according to latest figures from the Health Ministry.
The country is targeting to vaccinate 208.2 million people.
To date, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases across the country increased to 3.68 million with 108,571 deaths, the ministry reported on Monday, and the total number of recoveries from the pandemic in the Southeast Asian country was at least 3.12 million.
