The nation’s COVID-19 vaccination program has proceeded a little slower than expected, so the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) is considering expanding the program to include more priority groups, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said at a meeting of the Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee at the legislature in Taipei yesterday.
At present, vaccines are being offered to frontline healthcare workers at hospitals dealing with COVID-19 cases, but as of Sunday only 9,377 jabs had been administered.
As the first batch of about 117,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine has an expiration date of June 15, legislators expressed concern that they would not be used in time.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The number of vaccines administered in the first week was lower than the center had expected, Chen said, adding that the reason was likely because of media reports of adverse side effects overseas that have dented people’s confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“We allow people to freely choose if they want to get vaccinated and we arranged a priority list for the rollout so that people in higher-priority groups could get the vaccine first, but if their willingness to get vaccinated is low we could gradually offer the vaccine to lower-priority groups,” Chen said.
The center would discuss the issue and likely make an announcement tomorrow, he said.
Chen was asked whether the center had made any progress in its discussions with BioNTech in the past month after the minister last month said in an interview that Taiwan was close to securing a deal to purchase 5 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine last year, but the deal fell through at the last minute, possibly due to “intervention from outside forces.”
After the interview was published, Reuters reported that BioNTech said that the company was still planning to provide vaccines to Taiwan and that discussions were ongoing.
The center had asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to clarify the situation, Chen said, and the company had said that it might have to postpone providing the vaccine to Taiwan by several weeks or months due to supply-chain issues. Taiwan would likely have received other vaccines or domestically produced vaccines by that time, so the possibility of signing a contract with BioNTech has receded, he said.
Separately, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is also CECC spokesman, said the next priority group for vaccination would likely be “non-healthcare workers” at hospitals dealing with COVID-19 cases, as well as “healthcare workers at other facilities,” but that a decision would be made at a CECC specialists’ meeting.
Those who were vaccinated last week would need to receive a second dose in late May at the earliest, Chuang said, adding that the center is negotiating with AstraZeneca and COVAX to secure another shipment and that he was confident it would arrive in time.
Meanwhile, the center yesterday reported one new imported COVID-19 case, a Taiwanese who had returned from the Philippines.
Additional reporting by CNA
TIMING: 'The CHIPS Act funding is crucial for us. In other words, if the act’s passage is delayed for too long, we will certainly need to adjust,’ chairwoman Doris Hsu said GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓) plans to start construction on a US$5 billion wafer fabrication facility in Texas in November, after passage of the US$52 billion Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act. The fab would be the largest of its kind in the US and one of the largest in the world, with a monthly capacity of 1.2 million wafers, GlobalWafers said, adding that the investment would be the first new fab in the US in more than 20 years and critical to closing a semiconductor supply chain gap. The world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier said the project, which
Samsung Electronics Co yesterday commenced mass production of 3-nanometer chips that are more powerful and efficient than predecessors, beating rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to a key milestone in the race to build the most advanced chips in the world. South Korea’s largest company said in a statement that it was beginning with 3-nanometer semiconductors for high-performance and specialized low-power computing applications before expanding to mobile processors. By applying so-called Gate-All-Around transistor architecture, Samsung’s 3-nanometer products reduce power consumption by up to 45 percent and improve performance by 23 percent compared with 5-nanometer chips, it said. Samsung’s push to be first
COUNTERING CHINA: ‘When democracies demonstrate what we can do ... I have no doubt that we’ll win that competition every time,’ US President Joe Biden said US President Joe Biden rebooted his effort to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) after an earlier campaign faltered, enlisting the support of G7 leaders at their summit in Germany. The Build Back Better World initiative, named after Biden’s domestic spending and climate agenda, struggled to get off the ground because not enough G7 partners contributed financially when it was unveiled a year ago, people familiar with its lack of progress said. “When democracies demonstrate what we can do — all that we have to offer — I have no doubt that we’ll win that competition every time,” Biden said during
Three to four tropical storms or typhoons are expected to hit Taiwan this year due to a weak La Nina effect in the northwest Pacific Ocean, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday, as typhoon season begins next month. Taiwan’s typhoon season generally lasts from July to September, with most typhoons occurring in August. Weather Forecast Center Director Lu Kuo-chen (呂國臣) told a news conference that a weakening La Nina is expected to have less of an effect on Taiwan. “The climate simulation we conducted, and those conducted by other meteorological agencies around the world, showed that the number of typhoons that
RSS