Singapore is first Asian country to receive batch of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has landed in the tiny island nation after it was approved for distribution last week.
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As the United States races to get doses of the COVID-19 vaccine distributed across the country, the first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines landed in Singapore on Monday, according to statement from the country's national carrier.
"Singapore Airlines delivered the first shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines to Singapore earlier this evening on board one of its Boeing 747-400 freighters," a press release from Singapore Airlines reads.
The batch of vaccines were transported on board a freighter service from Brussels, Belgium to Singapore in a long-haul flight lasting nearly 20 hours, and subsequently transported to ultra-cold freezers.
Singapore is the first Asian country to receive shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which will be made available for free to all the country's residents when its roll-out begins in the coming weeks.
Delighted to see the first shipment of vaccines arrive in Singapore on flight SQ7979 – a welcome ‘present’ that we’ve...
Posted by Lee Hsien Loong on Monday, December 21, 2020
"Delighted to see the first shipment of vaccines arrive in Singapore on flight SQ7979 – a welcome 'present' that we've all been looking forward to," Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a post on Facebook on Monday.
Lee has said other vaccines will also be arriving in the upcoming months following approval. In recent weeks, daily rates of local infections have been kept to nearly zero in Singapore following an outbreak that started at cramped migrant worker dormitories in the spring.