Why Indonesia Became a Testing Ground for a Chinese Covid-19 Vaccine
The country is home to Asia’s second-worst Covid-19 outbreak, and it’s eager to take the risks.
A vaccine volunteer gets his blood drawn at a clinic in Bandung, West Java, on Sept. 11.
Photographer: Dimas Ardian/Bloomberg
On a scorching August day in Bandung, the capital of West Java province, two dozen volunteers arrive at a small community clinic inside a narrow alley to take part in the last stage of one of the world’s fastest-moving trials for a coronavirus vaccine.
There, surrounded by cramped homes and kids playing outdoors without masks, they prepare to take an experimental shot developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd., which many in Indonesia hope will bring an end to the destruction wreaked by the virus. With about a quarter-million infections, Indonesia’s outbreak is the second-worst in Southeast Asia after the Philippines, its daily case count hitting records every week since the end of August.