SINGAPORE – Singapore Airlines (SIA) today delivered the first shipment of Moderna Covid-19 vaccines to Singapore on board one of its Boeing 747-400 freighters.
The vaccines were carried on SQ7137, a scheduled freighter service from Brussels, Belgium.
This comes after the airline transported the first shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines into the country on December 21, 2020.
“We are glad to do our part to transport Covid-19 vaccines in a secure, reliable and timely manner to support national vaccination programmes,” said SIA senior vice-president (cargo), Chin Yau Seng, in a statement here.
Chin said besides today’s delivery, SIA has had the privilege of carrying shipments of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines to Australia and New Zealand, and Sinovac Covid-19 vaccines to Indonesia, over the past two months.
The Singapore Health Sciences Authority (HSA) had on February 3 granted an interim authorisation for the second Covid-19 vaccine, Moderna, to be used in Singapore.
The interim authorisation is under the Pandemic Special Access Route (PSAR), which is to facilitate early access to critical novel vaccines, medicines, and medical devices during a pandemic.
The vaccination regime submitted by Moderna requires two doses of the vaccine to be administered 28 days apart.
The vaccine demonstrated a high efficacy of 94%.
About 250,000 people have received their first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Singapore at the moment. – Bernama, February 17, 2021
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