Singapore turns into first Asian nation to vaccinate healthcare employees with Pfizer-BioNTech

Image Source : AP Singapore begins COVID-19 vaccination for healthcare employees
Singapore on Wednesday started vaccinating healthcare employees in opposition to COVID-19 with Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and have become the primary Asian nation to take action. More healthcare establishments will comply with within the coming weeks, with public healthcare establishments and personal hospitals to progressively prepare for his or her workers to be vaccinated inside their premises, The Straits Times reported. Elderly individuals aged 70 years previous and above will get the vaccine photographs from February.
Other Singaporeans and long-term residents who’re medically eligible for vaccination might be subsequent in line, in response to the report.
The Health Ministry’s professional committee had really useful that individuals at excessive danger of being contaminated, together with healthcare employees and front-line employees, must be given precedence for vaccination.
The committee’s suggestions have been accepted on the vaccination technique.
Singapore acquired its first cargo of vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech on December 21, with subsequent shares anticipated to reach in batches over a number of months.
Singapore is the primary nation in Asia to acquire the vaccine, which has been administered in different nations resembling Britain, Canada and the US.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been authorised by the Health Sciences Authority (HSA), and the professional committee has endorsed its use in Singapore for people aged 16 years previous and above.

The vaccine has demonstrated excessive efficacy of 95 per cent and its security profile is in step with excessive requirements set for different registered vaccines utilized in immunisation in opposition to totally different ailments, the committee famous.
While vaccination will not be a silver bullet that may finish the pandemic instantly, it’s a key enabler to getting Singapore again to a safer state of affairs, the Ministry of Health had stated final Sunday.
It will complement the likes of protected administration measures, testing and call tracing, to assist Singapore mitigate the unfold of the virus and preserve neighborhood transmission low.
The ministry famous that complete vaccination protection within the inhabitants will not directly shield those that can’t be inoculated as a consequence of medical causes.
In the long run, wider vaccination among the many neighborhood may even allow Singapore to reopen additional as a society and as an economic system and expedite its restoration from the pandemic.
Vaccination might be supplied on a free and voluntary foundation for all Singaporeans and long-term residents, who’re doubtless to have the ability to get vaccinated by end-2021 if there aren’t any unexpected disruptions to vaccine shipments.
In all, 58,400 folks have recovered from coronavirus, whereas 29 have died as a consequence of issues associated to COVID-19 this 12 months. 

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