Singapore Airlines (SIA) delivered the first shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines to Singapore on Monday on board one of its Boeing 747-400 freighters.

In a statement, the Singapore flag carrier said the vaccines were carried on board SQ7979, a scheduled freighter service from Brussels, Belgium, to Singapore. The flight departed on 20 December 2020 and arrived in Singapore on 21 December 2020 at approximately 1955hours.

The vaccine that arrived in Singapore will be the first Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine shipment to be delivered to a country in Asia.

Singapore Airlines said the shipment was prioritised for loading into the aircraft in Brussels and was given similar precedence during unloading in Singapore. It was then transported to SATS’s cold-chain facility, Coolport, for subsequent storage and ground transportation.

Prior to the delivery flight, SIA conducted a successful shipment trial on 19 December 2020 on the same freighter flight route.

Besides ensuring the smooth and safe delivery of the thermal shippers, also known as the cool boxes, used for the trial, the internal temperature of each box was actively tracked on an end-to-end basis. The sublimation rate of the dry ice in the cool boxes was also measured, it added.

“The delivery of this first batch of Covid-19 vaccines to Singapore is an important milestone in the fight against Covid-19, and we are honoured to be able to play a part in this,” Chin Yau Seng, senior vice president Cargo, SIA.

“It also served to demonstrate SIA’s and the Singapore air hub’s readiness for the very important job of transporting and distributing Covid-19 vaccines internationally,” he added.