SINGAPORE – Singapore Airlines (SIA) delivered the first shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines to Singapore earlier this evening on board one of its Boeing 747-400 freighters.
“The delivery of this first batch of Covid-19 vaccines to Singapore is an important milestone in the fight against Covid-19, and we are honoured to be able to play a part in this,” said SIA’s Senior Vice President Cargo, Chin Yau Seng, in a statement today.
“It also served to demonstrate SIA’s and the Singapore air hub’s readiness for the very important job of transporting and distributing Covid-19 vaccines internationally,” he added.
According to SIA, this was also the first Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine shipment to be delivered to a country in Asia.
The vaccines were carried on board SQ7979, a scheduled freighter service from Brussels, Belgium, to Singapore.
The flight departed on Saturday and arrived in Singapore today at approximately 1955 hours.
Prior to today’s delivery flight, SIA said it conducted a successful shipment trial on Dec 19, 2020 on the same freighter flight route.
Malaysia on Dec 19 had said it expects to receive its first batch the same vaccine in February, according to a report by its national news agency.
Last month, Malaysia announced it agreed to buy 12.8 million doses of the vaccine. Under the deal, Pfizer will deliver the first one million doses in the first quarter of 2021, with 1.7 million, 5.8 million and 4.3 million doses to follow in subsequent quarters.
Trade Minister Dato Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali said the government is also in talks with other pharmaceutical companies to secure more vaccines.
“The government is making efforts to get a bigger supply of vaccine to meet our needs. The government will take the advice of the Health Ministry regarding the percentage of people who need to be vaccinated,” Mohamed Azmin was quoted as saying.
Pfizer and their German partner BioNTech have supply deals with several countries including the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia and Britain.
They expect to produce globally up to 50 million doses of vaccines in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
More than 150 potential vaccines are being developed and tested globally to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, with 48 in human trials, according to the WHO.
