Chinese Sinovac Shot Seen As Highly Effective In Study

A spokesman for Sinovac in Beijing said the company cannot comment on the Indonesian study until it acquires more details.

Sinovac Biotech Ltd.'s vaccine is wiping out Covid-19 among health workers in Indonesia, an encouraging sign for the dozens of developing countries reliant on the controversial Chinese shot, which performed far worse than western vaccines in clinical trials. Indonesia tracked 25,374 health workers in capital city Jakarta for 28 days after they received their second dose and found that the vaccine protected 100% of them from death and 96% from hospitalization as soon as seven days after, said Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin in an interview on Tuesday. The workers were tracked until late February. Sadikin also said that 94% of the workers had been protected against infection -- an extraordinary result that goes beyond what was measured in the shot's numerous clinical trials -- though it's unclear if the workers were uniformly screened to detect asymptomatic carriers. "We see a very, very drastic drop," in hospitalizations and deaths among medical workers, Sadikin said. It's not known what strain of the coronavirus Sinovac's shot worked against in Indonesia, but the country has not flagged any major outbreaks driven by variants of concern.