Two shipments of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, each containing about 400,000 doses, arrived in Taiwan yesterday, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday, adding that one was donated by Poland and the other was from the COVAX global vaccine distribution program.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said the batch of 400,000 doses donated by Poland arrived early yesterday morning, and its expiration date is Nov. 30.
Chen visited the airport and the cold chain warehouse where the vaccines were transported to for storage and inspection, along with Bartosz Rys, the acting head of the Polish Office in Taipei.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Poland’s donation makes the central European country Taiwan’s third-largest vaccine donor, after Japan and the US.
Earlier this year, Japan donated 3.34 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Taiwan and the US donated 2.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine.
Poland is the fourth EU member state to have pledged vaccine donations to Taiwan, following Lithuania (20,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine), Slovakia (10,000 doses of an unspecified brand) and the Czech Republic (30,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine).
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The third shipment of COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX — a batch of 410,400 AstraZeneca vaccine doses — arrived in Taiwan yesterday afternoon.
Taiwan has procured a total of 4.76 million vaccine doses from COVAX, and so far 1.02 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been delivered: a first batch of 199,200 doses on April 4, a second batch of 410,400 doses on May 19 and yesterday’s batch, the CECC’s data showed.
Chen said the AstraZeneca vaccine doses that arrived yesterday would be offered mainly to people who have received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
As the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine would be offered to people aged 12 to 22, and the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine has already been offered to people aged 23 and above, the center plans to offer more than 800,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to people as their second dose in the next vaccination round, said Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), the CECC’s spokesperson.
Asked about concerns that students in junior-high school might receive a human papillomavirus vaccine at about the same time as they receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Chuang said that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices suggests that people get a COVID-19 vaccine at least seven days apart from other vaccines.
He said the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is planned to be administered from Sept. 23, starting with senior-high school students and later with junior-high school students, so there should be at least a two-week interval between when the junior-high students receive a dose of the two types of vaccines.
Asked if airline crew members should receive a third dose of vaccine to guard against vaccine breakthrough infections, CECC specialist advisory panel convener Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳) said that the panel has been discussing the matter, but a decision has not yet been made.
Additional reporting by CNA
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