Last week, I received a fourth COVID-19 vaccine shot. As I live in the US, I was able to receive a Pfizer vaccine, which made me wonder about what has happened with Taiwan’s domestically manufactured COVID-19 vaccine Medigen. Due to the heated local elections, Taiwan’s COVID-19 response has repeatedly been called into question.
First, to be fair, Taiwan’s COVID-19 response was the envy of the world. Even today, Taiwan still has the fourth-fewest COVID-19 deaths per million people, after Singapore, Japan and New Zealand.
Second, from an economic standpoint, supporting domestic vaccine development was a no brainer — especially during a COVID-19-induced recession. Objectively speaking, the efficacy of the Medigen vaccine was reported to be 84 percent better than that of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Lastly, during the vaccine shortage, having an effective domestically manufactured vaccine might have given the Taiwanese government more leverage to negotiate with pharmaceutical giants, especially when the distributor for Pfizer/BioNtech was a company in Shanghai. It is hard to believe that without the availability of the Medigen vaccine, the Chinese distributor would not hold out for terms more beneficial to the Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
They say hindsight is 20/20, but even with 20/20 hindsight, I still find it difficult to criticize Taiwan’s COVID-19 response.
Luke Hsieh
Riverside, California
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