Senior staff nurse Sarah Lim became the first person in Singapore to receive a COVID-19 vaccination on Wednesday (Dec 30).
Singapore vaccination the Asia’s first inoculation programme on Wednesday began administering Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine to health workers.
Singapore become the first country in Asia to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
The staff at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases were vaccinated, the healthy ministry said. They will return for the second dose of the vaccine on January 20, 2020.
Among the firsts to receive the vaccine were a 46-year-old nurse, Sarah Lim, and a 43-year-old infectious disease doctor, Kalisvar Marimuthu.
“Vaccines have managed to bring pandemics down to their knees before. So I am hopeful that this vaccine will do the same,” Marimuthu said in recorded remarks provided by the health ministry.
Singapore has placed advance orders for Moderna vaccine.
Singapore has also signed advance purchase agreements and made early down-payments on several other vaccine candidates, including those being developed by Moderna and Sinovac. It expects to have enough vaccine doses for all its 5.7 million people by the third quarter of 2021.
