Singapore PM gets his first coronavirus vaccine dose; Indonesia declares Sinovac shot halal

Lee Hsien Loong said he and top health official Kenneth Mak got inoculated early to show Singaporeans they are confident the Covid-19 vaccine is safe

Elsewhere, A 34-year-old man died in a hospital in Bhutan’s capital Thimpu, and Indonesian clerics said the Chinese firm’s vaccine was ‘holy and halal’

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Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong receives his Covid-19 vaccination jab at Singapore General Hospital on January 8. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:07pm, 8 Jan 2021Updated: 11:20pm, 8 Jan 2021

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong received his first shot of a vaccine against Covid-19 on Friday, he said in a Facebook post.

A video showed the 68-year-old being injected in the arm at a local hospital.

Singapore has so far only approved Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine but said it has also secured enough doses for its 5.7 million population including from other vaccine-makers like Moderna and Sinovac.

“We got vaccinated early to show Singaporeans we are confident that the vaccine is safe and effective,” Lee said, adding that he had been vaccinated alongside the country’s top health official, Kenneth Mak.

The city state gave its first jabs at the end of December, but Lee said broader vaccinations of health care workers from public institutions would start on Friday, followed by the elderly next month.

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