SINGAPORE – One of Asia’s first inoculation programmes was kickstarted in Singapore on Wednesday where healthcare workers were given doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.
A nurse named Sarah Lim, 46, and an infectious diseases doctor Kalisvar Marimuthu, 43, were the first among the more than 30 staff at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases to be given the vaccine on Wednesday, said the health ministry in a statement.
They will be given the second dose of the shot on January 20.
“Vaccines have managed to bring pandemics down to their knees before. So I am hopeful that this vaccine will do the same,” Marimuthu said.
Singapore became the first nation in Asia to grant approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. It has also inked advance purchase pacts and made early down-payments on several other vaccine candidates, including ones being developed by Moderna and Sinovac.
The government expects to have enough doses for all its 5.7 million people by the third quarter of next year.