Moderna jab available at four new vaccination centres from today
Singapore's vaccination drive is being ramped up, with the Moderna vaccine to be administered from today.
It is the second vaccine to be approved for use here and will be available at four new vaccination centres, with more centres added as more supplies arrive.
The Moderna vaccine will be administered at four community clubs: Hong Kah North, Marsiling , Punggol 21 and Radin Mas.
All other vaccination centres, as well as polyclinics and selected Public Health Preparedness Clinics (PHPC), will continue to offer the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
"Each vaccination centre will only stock and administer one type of vaccine. Individuals must select the same vaccination centre for both their first and second appointments when booking via the national appointment system," said the Ministry of Health yesterday.
It added that as the vaccination capacity of each vaccination centre is not the same, the waiting times for the first dose will differ between the centres.
GENETIC MATERIAL
Both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines use a newer messenger RNA technology, which involves injecting snippets of the virus' genetic material - and not the whole virus - into the body to stimulate an immune response.
Meanwhile, China's Sinovac vaccine, which is a more traditional, inactivated vaccine that makes use of killed virus particles, has already arrived in Singapore but is still being evaluated for safety and efficacy.
In addition to the four new centres mentioned earlier, three other vaccination centres will progressively commence operations from today. They are Nanyang Community Club, Sengkang Community Club and Arena@ Our Tampines Hub.
With the latest centres, those eligible can get their jabs at 31 vaccination centres, on top of the 20 polyclinics and 22 PHPCs.
The ministry expects that by the middle of next month, when there will be a total of 40 vaccination centres, some 80,000 individuals can be immunised a day.
As of Monday, more than 792,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered here.
More than 549,000 people have received at least the first dose, of whom about 243,000 have also got their second dose, and hence completed the full vaccination regimen.
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