Health Check Ep 54: Understanding Singapore’s portfolio approach to vaccine procurement

9:42 mins

Synopsis: This is a fortnightly podcast series on Wednesdays by The Straits Times that aims to help you make sense of heath matters that affect you.

This episode looks at how Singapore zeroed in on its choice of Covid-19 vaccines - from those by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna that are based on a relatively new mRNA technology, to Sinovac’s inactivated vaccine, which uses a technology that has been around for decades. It also touches on the speed of vaccine development.

ST senior health correspondent Joyce Teo hosts Professor Benjamin Seet, deputy group chief executive for education and research at the National Healthcare Group and a member of the expert committee on Covid-19 vaccination.

The discuss the following points:

1. How did Singapore decide on traditional and new types of vaccine technologies for the population? (1:03)
2. What are inactivated vaccines and mRNA vaccines? (3:52)
3. Assessing global regulatory approvals and statistics by Singapore's authorities (5:45)
4. Why every death supposedly talked about on social media, is not a direct result of the vaccine, and how science and stats must first be studied carefully (7:40)

Produced by: Joyce Teo (joyceteo@sph.com.sg), Penelope Lee and Ernest Luis 

Edited by: Penelope Lee

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