BY VIC­TO­RIA MILKO, AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

JAKAR­TA, In­done­sia (AP) — Biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny No­vavax said Mon­day that In­done­sia has giv­en the world’s first emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion for its COVID-19 vac­cine, which us­es a dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy than cur­rent shots.

The vac­cine doesn’t re­quire the ex­treme­ly cold stor­age tem­per­a­tures that some oth­er vac­cines need, which could al­low it to play an im­por­tant role in boost­ing sup­plies in poor­er coun­tries around the world.

The two-dose No­vavax vac­cine is made with lab-grown copies of the spike pro­tein that coats the coro­n­avirus. That’s very dif­fer­ent from wide­ly used mR­NA vac­cines such as Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na that de­liv­er ge­net­ic in­struc­tions for the body to make its own spike pro­tein.

The emer­gency au­tho­riza­tion of the vac­cine is a “very im­por­tant step” for In­done­sia’s COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion pro­gram, In­done­sian epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dicky Budi­man said.

“This vac­cine will be much eas­i­er to trans­port, store and dis­trib­ute in a place like In­done­sia, where we have many is­lands,” he said.

Budi­man said if the roll­out of the vac­cine is suc­cess­ful, it could lead to its ap­proval and use in oth­er de­vel­op­ing na­tions.

The need for more vac­cines re­mains crit­i­cal in many coun­tries, in­clud­ing In­done­sia.

In June, U.S.-based No­vavax an­nounced the vac­cine had proven about 90% ef­fec­tive against symp­to­matic COVID-19 in a study of near­ly 30,000 peo­ple in the U.S. and Mex­i­co. It al­so worked against vari­ants cir­cu­lat­ing in those coun­tries at the time, it said.

The com­pa­ny said side ef­fects were mild and in­clud­ed ten­der­ness at the in­jec­tion site, headache, aches and pains and fa­tigue.

In Oc­to­ber, it ad­dressed con­cerns that pro­duc­tion of the vac­cine had been slowed due to a lack of raw ma­te­ri­als and oth­er is­sues, say­ing it planned to “achieve a ca­pac­i­ty of 150 mil­lion dos­es per month by the end of the fourth quar­ter” through part­ner­ships with Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia, SK Bio­science in South Ko­rea and Take­da in Japan, among oth­ers.

No­vavax said it has al­ready filed for au­tho­riza­tion of the vac­cine in the Unit­ed King­dom, Eu­ro­pean Union, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, In­dia and the Philip­pines.

In­done­sia was bat­tered by a dead­ly wave of COVID-19 fu­eled by the delta vari­ant and post-hol­i­day trav­el from June through Au­gust. New cas­es have now dropped, av­er­ag­ing less than 1,000 a day since mid Oc­to­ber.

About 36% of peo­ple in In­done­sian have re­ceived two dos­es of a vac­cine, and about 58% have re­ceived one dose, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health.

Over 143,400 peo­ple have died from the virus in In­done­sia. The num­ber is thought to be an un­der­count due to low test­ing and trac­ing.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Niniek Karmi­ni con­tributed to this re­port.