Premier Lin Chuan (林全) yesterday said that 80,000 seasonal influenza vaccines originally earmarked for the National Health Insurance (NHI) system would be made available for the public to purchase at their own expense.
Lin made the remark during a visit to Hsinchu County, following reports that many people not eligible for NHI-covered flu vaccinations could not get vaccinated at their own expense because there is an insufficient number of vaccines on the market.
“There are 6 million NHI-covered flu vaccines, so there are still many left and these should now be made available to people who want to pay for them,” Lin said. “The vaccines [for NHI purposes] can be replaced.”
As the number of deaths and complications from severe flu cases last year was especially high, the Centers for Disease Control last month announced that the eligibility for NHI-covered flu vaccinations would be expanded and that it had prepared about 6 million NHI-covered vaccines.
Since Oct. 1, nearly 2.8 million people have received NHI-covered flu vaccines, which is nearly 1 million more than the same period last year, the centers said yesterday.
However, as the vaccinations are very popular this year, the number of vaccinations available to the public at hospitals is insufficient, the centers said.
Tsui Ko-chung (崔可忠), a physician at Cathay General Hospital’s Department of Pathology, said that of the three companies which supply vaccines, one is out of stock and the other two are facing difficulties meeting demand.
Centers Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said that of the 6 million NHI-covered vaccinations, 5.1 million were allocated to hospitals, clinics and local health departments, and 0.9 million are still being examined at border customs and are expected to go into circulation next month.
“The peak of the flu season is usually from Christmas to about the Lunar New Year holidays,” Chung said. “Now is only the beginning of the season.”
He said the NHI-covered flu vaccines would be used by the end of the year.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching