At least two private healthcare institutions in Singapore want to bring in more China-made Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines after responses to non-mRNA vaccines here indicate they are in hot demand.

One of the clinics indicated to CNA that there are plans to look into the "regulatory and logistic hurdles that are involved in bringing in these vaccines", adding that "it’s really just exploratory" at this stage "to understand whether it's possible".

The two clinics are StarMed Specialist Centre and another unnamed clinic, which declined to be named, as it feared it would be inundated with calls from the public.

The two are part of the 24 approved clinics to administer the Sinovac shots under the Special Access Route.

MOH released its list of approved clinics to administer the shots on June 16.

It costs S$10 to S$25 for a single dose.

Hot demand

StarMed Specialist Centre administers about 80 doses a day, and is expected to administer 120 doses a month from now.

That is when people taking their first and second doses will start showing up.

So far, 4,000 people have booked appointments to be vaccinated.

As to how hot the demand is, another clinic, Thomson Wellth Clinic, said it is able to administer about 150 vaccinations a day and has vaccinated about 400 people so far.

More than 1,500 individuals have registered their interest to receive the Sinovac vaccine.

China administered more than 1 billion homegrown vaccines

So far, China has administered more than 1 billion doses of its homegrown Covid-19 vaccines, the majority developed by local companies Sinovac and Sinopharm.

Hundreds of millions of doses of these vaccines have also been shipped to more than 80 countries worldwide.

Top photo via Xinhua