Non-mRNA Vaccines

NOTICE PAPER NO. 941
NOTICE OF QUESTION FOR ORAL ANSWER
FOR THE SITTING OF PARLIAMENT ON 15 FEBRUARY 2022

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament
Mr Yip Hon Weng, 
MP for Yio Chu Kang

Question No. 2412

To ask the Minister for Health with regard to individuals who completed their primary vaccine course with non-mRNA vaccines (a) how many of these individuals’ fully-vaccinated status will expire by 14 February 2022; (b) whether those who are medically ineligible for mRNA vaccines can receive a booster dose of a non-mRNA vaccine; and (c) if not, when will non-mRNA boosters be made available.

NOTICE PAPER NO. 967
NOTICE OF QUESTION FOR ORAL ANSWER
FOR THE SITTING OF PARLIAMENT ON OR AFTER 15 FEBRUARY 2022

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament
Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song
MP for Aljunied GRC

Question No. 2536

To ask the Minister for Health (a) what are the considerations for not making the Sinovac-CoronaVac and Sinopharm vaccines generally available to children and adolescents, except adolescents who are not medically eligible for the Pfizer-BionNTech/Comirnaty vaccine; and (b) whether the Ministry has plans to make at least one non-mRNA vaccine generally available to children under 18 in order to maximise the vaccination rate of the Singapore population.

Answer

Mr Speaker, may I seek your permission to take Questions 6 and 7 together please?

As of 9 February 2022, there were about 1,000 individuals who completed their primary course with non-mRNA vaccines and would have their “fully-vaccinated” status expire by 14 February 2022.

Persons who are medically ineligible to receive the mRNA vaccine and aged 18 and above, can receive the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine under the National Vaccination Programme (NVP), as a booster vaccine.

The use of the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine under NVP is only for persons aged 18 and above, as the vaccine manufacturer did not include children and adolescents when filing for interim authorisation of the vaccine under the Health Sciences Authority (HSA)’s Pandemic Special Access Route (PSAR). Both Sinovac-CoronaVac and the Sinopharm vaccines are also not currently recommended for routine use in persons aged below 18 years of age by the World Health Organization.

Notwithstanding the manufacturer’s filing on the use of the vaccine, limited data from the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine manufacturer’s early Phase I / II trials in healthy children and adolescents aged three to 17 years old do not show safety concerns, and we recognize the need for alternative vaccines for persons medically ineligible for the currently approved vaccine in this age group.

The Ministry of Health has therefore also separately introduced a dedicated public health programme – Sinovac after mRNA (SAM), outside of the NVP, to offer the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine to individuals aged 12 to 17 years who are medically ineligible for the Pfizer-BioNTech/Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine, to afford them some level of protection against COVID-19 while closely monitoring their safety. SAM is therefore part of a research study, which under our current regulatory framework, enabled the administration of the Sinovac vaccine to an age group outside the scope of PSAR approval. In January 2022, the programme was further extended to eligible children aged five to 11 years, after the data from the older age group indicated that the safety profile of the vaccine was generally consistent with that of other registered vaccines used in immunisation against other diseases.

The MOH is working to bring in other non-mRNA options for those who are medically ineligible. The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine has been assessed by HSA to be safe and effective for persons aged 18 years and above, with two doses demonstrating a vaccine efficacy of 90% against symptomatic infection and 100% against severe disease with the wildtype SARS-CoV2 and the Alpha variant with no significant safety concerns.

Therefore, in February 2022, HSA issued its PSAR interim authorisation letter to Novavax for its COVID-19 vaccine. Novavax recently released data that the vaccine was found to be 80% effective against COVID-19 in a late-stage trial in adolescents aged 12-17 years in the United States when the Delta variant was the dominant strain. HSA and MOH will evaluate the data from this study and will continue to monitor for more data on its efficacy and safety in children and adolescents.

The Expert Committee for COVID-19 Vaccination (EC19V) has also reviewed data on the vaccine’s safety and efficacy, and has recommended the use of the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine under the NVP for primary and booster vaccination in individuals aged 18 years and older.

We hope that the initial doses of the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in Singapore within a matter of months, provided that there are no disruptions to the shipment schedule. Meanwhile, those who are medically eligible are encouraged to take the available mRNA vaccines as they offer more optimal protection.