Food delivery workers should be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccination to ensure their safety, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Legislator Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶) said yesterday.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Labor should establish a schedule for vaccinating food deliverers and others in high-risk occupations, she said, adding that she has submitted a request on the issue to the ministries.
“Protecting these delivery personnel is in the interest of both their health and ours,” she said.
Photo: Cheng I-hwa, Bloomberg
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many restaurants have closed their doors, and as an increasing number of people are staying home, they rely on delivery services for food, making delivery workers an indispensable segment of the society at this time, she said.
Until then, people ordering food online should choose the option of least contact, such as paying online, and allowing deliverers to leave the food outside their front door or with building personnel, she said.
Delivery companies should encourage these options through notices on their apps and Web sites, she added.
“More importantly, companies must ensure that their delivery workers have their temperatures regularly checked, and that they have masks, gloves, sanitizer and other protective items,” she said.
Food suppliers should regularly sanitize their facilities, she said, adding that they could gain public trust by taking the initiative with disease prevention measures and reporting on them.
The National Delivery Industrial Union issued a statement, urging the ministries to respond to the issue as soon as possible to “guarantee the effectiveness of pandemic-response measures.”
In other news, the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) yesterday protested outside the Ministry of Health and Welfare building in Taipei, urging the ministry to allow the importation of China-made COVID-19 vaccines.
In a statement on Saturday, the CUPP blamed the outbreak of COVID-19 on the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) refusal to accept vaccines from China, which it said Beijing had several times offered to donate to Taiwan.
“Beijing is willing to put its feelings aside to protect the safety of Taiwanese, donating vaccines to Taiwan that were approved by the WHO. The DPP should mend its ways,” the statement read.
Asked yesterday about the Taiwanese public’s lack of trust in Chinese vaccines, Chang Wei (張瑋), son of CUPP founder Chang An-le (張安樂), said that his father had shown no health problems since being given the vaccine.
Commenting on the matter yesterday, Taiwan Statebuilding Party news department deputy director Chen Tzu-yu (陳子瑜) said that there were concerns worldwide about the efficacy of China-made vaccines.
For example, the Seychelles — which vaccinated 60 percent of its population with China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine — has reported the vaccine to be only 50 percent effective, despite the company claiming it to be 78.1 percent effective in those aged 18 to 59, he said.
Additional reporting by Wang Kuan-jen and Ko Yu-hao
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