Coronavirus: Singapore says it’s given 60,000 vaccine shots, as it tightens social distancing curbs ahead of Lunar New Year

While the government will ramp up immunisations, it expects delays to imports of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine

Meanwhile, shops in Chinatown will be monitored ahead of the Lunar New Year, and a cap on eight daily household visitors will begin on January 26

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A health care worker is vaccinated at Gleneagles Hospital in Singapore on January 19, 2021. Photo: Reuters

Published: 7:00pm, 22 Jan 2021Updated: 7:32pm, 22 Jan 2021

Some 60,000 residents in Singapore have received their first Covid-19 vaccine shots since December 30, authorities said on Friday, adding that immunisation efforts would be ramped up in what it touted as the “largest vaccination exercise in our history”.

This figure included staff working in the health care sector and in frontline and essential services, the health ministry said.

In Southeast Asia, only Singapore and Indonesia have so far started their vaccination drives, with the latter inoculating 60,815 people as of Wednesday, according to an Indonesian senior health ministry official.

Singapore’s health ministry said its next steps would involve vaccinating senior citizens from the end of January.

Health minister Gan Kim Yong, who co-chairs a multi-ministerial coronavirus task force, said at a virtual press conference on Friday that he expected upcoming delays to its shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine due to an upgrade of a Pfizer manufacturing plant in Europe.

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