President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Vice President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday morning each received a second dose of the Medigen COVID-19 vaccine as part of the government’s efforts to encourage people to sign up for the domestically produced drug.
Tsai received her shot at about 7:15am at the gym of National Taiwan University’s College of Medicine in Taipei, while Lai received his at about 7:45am at the same mass vaccination site.
Both were followed by photographers and film crews from local media organizations as their temperatures were taken, they filled in outpatient forms and doctors asked them whether they had any side effects after receiving the first dose.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA-EFE
After reporting no side effects, they each received the second dose, displayed their yellow vaccination passbooks and posed for photographs with healthcare staff.
Medigen is the only local drugmaker so far to have received emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine in Taiwan.
The drug has been administered to the public since August, with the Central Epidemic Command Center suggesting an interval of 28 days between the two doses of the Medigen vaccine.
Photo: Ann Wang, REUTERS
However, the vaccine stirred controversy even before its rollout began, with opponents of the drug criticizing that it had in July been granted authorization before phase 3 clinical trials started.
At the time, Medigen said that immunobridging studies proved that the drug is effective, as people who received the vaccine during phase 2 trials had higher levels of COVID-19 antibodies in their blood than those who received the widely used AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
While international experts remain divided over vaccine authorizations based on immunobridging data, Medigen said that similar trials on COVID-19 vaccines had been conducted in Japan, South Korea and the UK, instead of traditional placebo-controlled clinical endpoint trials.
So far, more than 700,000 Taiwanese have received their first dose of the Medigen vaccine.
About 55,000 people opted exclusively for the vaccine when choosing which brand they want to be inoculated with — a significantly lower number than those who opted exclusively for other brands used in the nation, including the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which has only been available since last month.
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