The first shipment of Moderna's Covid-19 vaccines has arrived in Singapore on Wednesday (Feb. 17), onboard a Singapore Airlines (SIA) Boeing 747-700 cargo plane.

According to an SIA press release, the vaccines were carried on board SQ7137, a scheduled freighter service from Brussels, Belgium, and arrived in Singapore on Feb. 17.

The vaccines were prioritised for loading into the aircraft in Brussels, and were given similar priority during unloading in Singapore, where they were transported immediately to SATS's cold-chain facility, Coldport, for storage and ground transportation.

Vaccine arrived two weeks after being approved

The Health Sciences Authority (HSA) granted the Moderna vaccine interim authorisation on Feb. 3, 2021, making it the second Covid-19 vaccine to be approved for use in Singapore, after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was approved in December 2020.

HSA also said that the vaccine, which requires two doses to be administered 28 days apart, has demonstrated a high efficacy of 94 per cent.

It was reported then that the first shipment of the Moderna vaccine was expected to arrive around March 2021.

SIA will prioritise capacity for vaccines

This is not the first time SIA has transported Covid-19 vaccines on its fleet.

On Dec. 21, 2020, SIA transported the first shipment of Pfizer-BionTech Covid-19 vaccines to Singapore.

This was also the first Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine shipment to be delivered to a country in Asia.

In addition, SIA have carried shipments of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines to Australia and New Zealand, as well as Sinovac vaccines to Indonesia, over the last two months.

SIA has also been prioritising airfreight capacity for vaccine movements, according uplift priority to Covid-19 vaccine shipments across key vaccine trade lanes.

"This means readying the airline's seven Boeing 747-400 freighters, as well as the airline's passenger aircraft fleet which will be deployed on cargo operations to increase the capacity for vaccine transportation where needed," wrote SIA.

Top image via MCI.