Reliability record makes Singapore ideal vaccine distribution hub

THE recent flurry of announcements by drug manufacturers that their Covid-19 vaccines have successfully completed clinical trials have brought a huge relief to a pandemic-weary world.

Ordinarily, the process that follows to certify and approve the vaccines for immunisation among the general public would take months if not years. But desperate times call for desperate measures; in a matter of weeks, the UK became the first Western country to authorise the mass deployment of a vaccine developed jointly by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech following news of a positive interim efficacy analysis of their Phase 3 study.

The UK has ordered 40 million doses of the vaccine, with the first batch of shots to the public started on Dec 8. A host of other countries are also in various stages of approving and rolling out immunisation schedules for their residents in double quick time.