Governments and religious leaders in Muslim-majority countries talk to vaccine manufacturers, examine manufacturing processes, and provide guidance to ensure that concerns about products banned by Islam do not interfere with Covid-19 inoculations.
On Friday, the Supreme Administrative Council in Indonesia, with the world’s largest Muslim population, said the Chinese Sinovac vaccine is allowed by Islam, or halal. The decision came after representatives of the board visited Sinovac’s factory in China last year and conducted a halal audit.
Part of the challenge of rolling out vaccines worldwide will be to convince enough people to use them to achieve immunity to herds. In many countries, Muslim and non-Muslim, efforts must address security concerns, suspicions and conspiracy theories, as well as religious and ethical concerns.
Gelatin derived from pigs and cells made with human fetal tissue, both of which are common in vaccine production, are not halal, Muslim scholars say.
Acceptance of vaccinations before the coronavirus pandemic varied widely among Muslim countries, with high levels of confidence in countries such as Bangladesh and Uzbekistan, according to an opinion study in 149 countries published in September 2020 in the medical journal Lancet. The survey found that of the 10 countries with the strongest decline in vaccine confidence over the four years to 2019, seven were predominantly Muslim: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria and Pakistan. The other three were Japan, Georgia and Serbia.