Indonesia's semiofficial authority on Islam said on Friday that a vaccine developed by China's Sinovac Biotech was halal, paving the way for its use in a mass inoculation drive next week.
"The fatwa commission agreed that the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Sinovac is halal," said Asrorun Niam, the secretary of the fatwa commission at the Indonesian Council of Ulema.
The head of the country's Food and Drug Control Agency, Penny Lukito, said on Friday that the results of late-stage trials of the Sinovac vaccine in Brazil and Turkey showed that it had the efficacy of 78% and 91.25%, respectively.
Sinovac is also conducting a similar trial in Indonesia, but efficacy data is still pending, she said.
Indonesia is scheduled to start its mass vaccination drive against COVID-19 next Wednesday, with President Joko Widodo being the first to receive the shot to assure the public that the vaccine is safe, officials said.
Indonesia has received 3 million doses of Sinovac's vaccine.
Sinovac is also scheduled to deliver 45 million doses of the vaccine in a bulk shipment later this month for production by Indonesia's state-owned pharmaceutical company BioFarma, the government said.
Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country with 270 million people, has the largest COVID-19 caseload in Southeast Asia.
On Friday, the country recorded 10,617 new cases, a record daily number, bringing the total to 808,340, according to Health Ministry data. The virus-related death toll rose to 23,735 after 233 fatalities were recorded overnight.
