JAKARTA, May 16 (Xinhua): The Indonesian government has suspended the use of the CTMAV547 batch of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine following the death of a recipient in the capital of Jakarta recently, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.
"Not all batches of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been stopped for distribution and use, only the CTMAV547 batch, while waiting for the results of an investigation and testing from BPOM (Indonesia's national agency of drug and food control) for around one or two weeks," said Siti Nadia Tarmizi, the health ministry spokesperson for vaccination.
Indonesia received 3,852,000 doses of the British AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine on April 26, including 448,480 doses of the CTMAV547 batch, through the COVAX facilitycu scheme initiated by the World Health Organisation.
The doses of vaccine of the CTMAV547 batch have been distributed to the army, parts of Jakarta, and North Sulawesi province in the South-East Asian country.
Trio Fauqi Virdaus, 22, had a high fever after receiving a dose of the the CTMAV547 batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine on May 5, and died the next day.
The National Commission on Post-Immunization Accidents suggested that BPOM carry out sterility and toxicity tests on the CTMAV547 batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine over the death.
"There is not enough evidence to link this accident to the impact of immunization. Therefore, further investigations are still needed," said Hindra Irawan Satari, the commission's head.
The confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Indonesia rose by 3,080 in the past 24 hours to 1,739,750, with the death toll adding by 126 to 48,093, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.
According to the ministry, 3,790 more patients were discharged from hospitals, bringing the total number of recoveries from the coronavirus epidemic to 1,600,857.
The virus has spread to all the country's 34 provinces.
Specifically, in the past 24 hours, West Java recorded 792 new confirmed cases, Riau 355, Central Java 346, Riau Islands 222 and East Java 164.
No new cases were detected in seven provinces, namely East Nusa Tenggara, North Sulawesi, Central Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi, West Sulawesi, Maluku and Papua. - Xinhua
