The government has nothing to hide about its COVID-19 vaccine procurement contract with Taiwan-based Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp, Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said yesterday, adding that opposition parties should not denigrate the contributions of disease-prevention workers for political gain.
Chen was speaking ahead of a plenary session in which he was to brief legislators on the vaccine procurement process with the Taiwanese pharmaceutical firm in 2021.
Although the Ministry of Health and Welfare has asked Medigen to publicize details of the contract, which includes a nondisclosure agreement, to dispel misconceptions about the deal before the five-year confidentiality period expires, the company has yet to do so.
Photo: CNA
“The contract with Medigen was signed in accordance with regulations and standards practiced in the international community. We have nothing to hide about the contract. Every country signs confidentiality agreements in contracts with vaccine makers. As such, we would need the consent from the contracting party to disclose the terms of the contract,” Chen said.
The government risks losing its credibility if it unilaterally reveals the terms of that contract, he added.
“Once the government’s credibility is in question, any future procurement of vaccines and drugs would be rejected, which would in turn harm people’s health,” he said.
Medigen said its board of directors would convene to discuss whether it would disclose the terms of the contract.
“Any decision must be made in accordance with the principle of corporate governance and to ensure that 46,000 shareholders’ rights are protected,” it said in a statement.
The Cabinet said in a written briefing to legislators that it twice procured vaccines from Medigen.
The first batch contained 2 million doses, with each dose costing NT$881, while the second batch contained 2.8 million doses, at a per-dose cost of NT$810.
The average price was approximately NT$840 per dose, which was lower than the prices of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, it said.
Chen told lawmakers that the Control Yuan and the National Audit Office had scrutinized the Medigen vaccine procurement and found no wrongdoing.
Neither had prosecutors found any evidence of illegalities among 63 cases reported to them about the procurement, he said.
One member on the vaccine review committee was sentenced to three months in prison and two years of probation for leaking clinical trial results of Medigen’s vaccine to his wife, he said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tseng Ming-chung (曾銘宗) said that Medigen’s share price soared from NT$27 in 2020 to NT$417 by May 31, 2021, before closing at NT$68.4 on Monday, adding that his office has received protests from individual shareholders.
“In the process of developing vaccines, share prices of vaccine makers tend to rise when animal tests and clinical trials show success, and prices tend to fall when experiments fail to produce significant results,” Chen said. “It is only normal that share prices would vary in different phases of vaccine development. One can see the trend in the share prices of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.”
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) asked Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) about the confidentiality period of contracts with vaccine makers.
Hsueh said that agreements with Medigen and AstraZeneca last five years, while Pfizer-BioNTech asked to keep the contract confidential for 10 years.
Moderna, on the other hand, requested that the contract remain confidential under any condition, he said.
“In that case, why is not anyone from the opposition parties questioning our confidentiality agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech?” Tsai asked.
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