Two insurance companies are considering offering new policies designed for people who need treatment due to serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, the Financial Supervisory Commission said.
The insurers plan to offer the products to individuals, but they have not finalized the scope of coverage nor the size of premiums, Insurance Bureau Director-General Shih Chiung-hwa (施瓊華) told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee in Taipei yesterday.
“Once they [the insurers] submit their applications to launch the new products, we will expedite the review process so that the products can be put on the market and become available for consumers faster, if they qualify,” Shih said.
Photo: CNA
She did not identify the insurance companies.
Shih’s remarks came after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) asked the commission if there are existing insurance policies to help people deal with any adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines.
“According to my understanding, no insurance policies would cover the risks,” Lai said, adding that the commission should address the issue, as controversies might arise after more people receive COVID-19 jabs.
The issue would be important, as some countries have delayed the rollout of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine over reports of blood clots, he added.
Lai asked the commission if it was encouraging the public to receive vaccinations, as the planned insurance policies would protect them.
“We think the vaccines recommended by the Ministry of Health and Welfare should not be problematic, but if consumers want the [insurance] products, we would make them available,” commission Chairman Thomas Huang (黃天牧) said.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
RSS