SIA delivers first shipment of Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to Singapore

By Massita Ahmad

SINGAPORE, Feb 17 -- 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 for the country on Dec 21, 2020.

"We are glad to do our part in transporting COVID-19 vaccines in a secure, reliable and timely manner to support national vaccination programmes," said senior vice president cargo of SIA, 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 Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines to Indonesia, over the past two months.

The Singapore Health Sciences Authority (HSA) had on Feb 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 vaccine efficacy of 94 per cent.

About 250,000 people have received their first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Singapore at the moment.

-- BERNAMA