TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – A researcher from Airlangga University (Unair), Fedik Abdul Rantam was a delegate at the 72nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany on Monday, June 26 2023. The event is an international scientific forum where Nobel laureates and scientists from various fields.

Fedik, who is an expert in virology and immunology, said he was grateful to be able to share his knowledge with 600 selected young researchers from various countries. “We researchers only get one chance in a lifetime to be involved,” he said as quoted from the Unair website.

Fedik was successfully selected as one of the Indonesian research delegations that met special criteria. Launching from the website of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, the first step to be able to take part in this activity is for researchers to go through curation and selection. Furthermore, the Ministry of Education will submit the final decision to the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Foundation.

This year, Indonesia, through the Ministry of Education and Culture, has the opportunity to become a partner at a meeting with the theme of physiology and medicine. Indonesia sent a number of outstanding researchers, including from Airlangga University and Gadjah Mada University (UGM).

At the forum, Fedik delivered a presentation entitled “Indonesia in Overcoming Covid-19 Pandemic and Domestic Vaccine Development”.

Through this presentation, he explained how Indonesia handled the Covid-19 pandemic, one of which was by developing the Red and White vaccine initiated by Unair researchers. His presentation, he said, received good responses from other participants.

“They are interested in the advantages of our vaccine and also how to determine to isolate as a unit seed vaccine,” said the Head of the Airlangga University Vaccine Research and Development Center.

Not only that, he also said that he and his team were preparing a second-generation vaccine, namely the cocktail vaccine. He added, even though the status has now been endemic, that does not mean cases of transmission of Covid-19 can be ignored. “Even though the status is currently considered endemic, vaccination is still needed as a preventive in the spread of Covid-19,” he explained.

News Source: tempo.co