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SINGAPORE – The Covid-19 vaccination campaign began in the private healthcare sector on Saturday (January 9), with 50 employees of the Parkway Pantai group receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech injection.
The injections were administered in two places. Thirty doctors and nurses received the injection at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, while another 20 received the vaccine at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Orchard.
Among those who received the vaccine at Novena Hospital were senior executives at Parkway Pantai and some of the hospital’s infectious disease doctors, who said they hoped to set an example to reassure their colleagues that they may hesitate to receive the mRNA vaccine. .
Dr Prem Kumar Nair, Executive Director of Singapore Operations Division at Parkway Pantai, told the media when he received the injection in his left arm: “I echo what Prime Minister Lee said yesterday: it is painless, effective and important. “
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had taken the Covid-19 vaccine on Friday morning, at the beginning of a nationwide campaign to vaccinate staff at various public health institutions.
Dr. Prem thanked the Ministry of Health (MINSA) for extending vaccines beyond public hospitals, and said the group aims to vaccinate as many of its staff, temporary workers and providers as possible over the next several weeks.
The healthcare group hopes to achieve a 90 percent vaccination rate among its front-line workers, who number more than 8,000. About 70 percent of them have so far indicated that they would take the vaccine.
Covid-19 vaccines are voluntary in Singapore.
Said Dr. Prem: “We thought we would start today by getting Parkway Pantai leaders vaccinated. And this includes some of our key infectious disease physicians as well.”
He added that there will be some among the staff who might be concerned about vaccination due to concerns about side effects, and this fear is something that the leadership wants to allay by taking the lead and also through outreach sessions like town hall meetings.
In addition to Dr. Prem, who is 60 years old, Parkway Pantai COO for Singapore Operations, Dr. Noel Yeo, 40, and Dr. Peter Chow, 46, CEO of Mount Hospital Elizabeth Novena, were also vaccinated.
The group’s infectious disease specialists, Leong Hoe Nam, 50, and Asok Kurup, 53, also received the injection.
Dr. Asok, an infectious disease specialist at Mount Elizabeth Hospital, said that while media reports have highlighted cases of people experiencing severe allergic reactions to the injection, this was very rare.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report on January 6 that found that only about 11.1 such reactions had occurred per million doses administered.
“So we are seeing a very rare occurrence, but even if such cases did happen, there are measures to treat them,” he said.
For example, those who received the vaccine were monitored for at least 30 minutes on the spot. Emergency carts and monitors were also kept nearby, and emergency and accident medics were asked to standby.
However, the doctors stressed that these were only precautionary measures.
Logistic exercise
Parkway Pantai aims to give the majority of its staff the first of the two required doses of the vaccine within the next three weeks, Dr. Yeo said.
More of them will receive the vaccine starting Monday.
The group’s four hospitals – Gleneagles Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, and Parkway East Hospital – will be used as vaccination centers for staff, and depending on supply, up to 150 of them should be able to receive the vaccine. at each site every day of the week.
For now, hospitals will order doses of the vaccine from the Ministry of Health one day in advance to reduce waste, said Ms. Chua Hui Ling, senior pharmacist at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital. Messenger RNA vaccines are temperature sensitive and close coordination is required for storage and administration.
While vaccines are kept frozen at -70 degrees C, hospitals receive thawed vials, each containing about five doses, in cooler boxes kept between 2 and 8 degrees C.
These vials can be stored at these refrigeration temperatures for up to five days.
But before doses can be administered, they must be heated to about 25 ° C and diluted. Once this is done, the doses should be administered within six hours.
Ms. Low Siew Yean, senior manager of nursing at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, said arrangements have been made to ensure that staff report to their vaccination appointments in groups of five.
Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital nurse educator Nursyahidah Abdul Rahim, 35, was one of the frontline workers who received the vaccine on Saturday.
She had been among the staff stationed at the Tuas checkpoint to screen incoming visitors in the early days of the pandemic, and recalls getting on a passenger bus from Wuhan, China, all of whom were showing symptoms.
On her decision to get vaccinated, Ms Nursyahidah said: “We do our social distancing, we have learned about personal hygiene, but only one piece was missing. And now it is finally complete. This vaccine is something we have been waiting for.”
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