Moderna Inc’s emergency use authorization (EUA) for vaccines targeting the XBB variant of SARS-CoV-2 is imminent, with doses expected to be available as soon as the second half of next month, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said yesterday.
Taiwan intends to import 2 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in its first delivery, Chuang said.
While target groups are yet to be assigned by the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, high-risk groups would “definitely be on the list,” he said.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital
Infectious Diseases Society of Taiwan president Wang Fu-te (王復德) said that XBB has become the most prevalent strain in Asia.
It is highly resistant, “possibly due to altered antibody evasion properties deriving from their additional spike mutations,” Wang said, citing work by researcher David Ho (何大一).
Chuang said that BioNTech had also reached out to the CDC for further collaboration, but Taiwan was unlikely to purchase BioNTech vaccines this year, as it still has 14 million Moderna doses.
The government might consider BioNTech as a pay-out-of-pocket option next year, he said.
Separately, Sun Wen-jung (孫文榮), secretary-general of the Taiwan Association of Family Medicine, said that with the end of summer vacation nearing, the government should be on the lookout for a possible surge in COVID-19 cases.
The government should be vigilant throughout the Mid-Autumn Festival and Double Ten National Day holidays, Sun said.
People who are in high-risk groups for the disease should report to a hospital or clinic as soon as possible if they develop symptoms of the disease, he added.
Meanwhile, mask rules are to be further eased at school campuses at elementary and junior-high schools in Taipei when classes start on Wednesday next week and parents would be allowed on school grounds, the city government said yesterday.
Masks would no longer be required on school buses or at campus gatherings, and would only be required in school health centers, the Taipei Department of Education said, adding that parents would be allowed back on campus to meet faculty or participate in school activities.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
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