US drugmaker Moderna Inc on Tuesday said that it has signed an agreement with the government to supply Taiwan with 5 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine.
Although the vaccine has not yet been approved for use in Taiwan, Moderna would work with regulators to pursue the necessary approval prior to distribution, the company said in a statement.
Moderna also said that it has agreed to supply 10 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to Colombia and that deliveries to the countries would begin in the middle of this year.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
“We thank the governments of both Taiwan and Colombia for partnering with us to bring the COVID-19 vaccine Moderna to Taiwan and Colombia,” Moderna chief executive officer Stephane Bancel said in the statement. “Both governments have moved quickly to get this done in the face of the pandemic and we appreciate their collaboration.”
The agreement with Moderna was confirmed yesterday by Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center.
“We have already signed the agreement,” and the vaccines are likely to arrive in middle of this year, Chen said.
The center had earlier said that it was in talks with an international pharmaceutical company for 5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, but it did not name the firm or give any other details of the discussions.
In December last year, the center said that it had ordered about 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, including 4.76 million through the international COVAX allocation program and 10 million of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed by AstraZeneca PLC and the University of Oxford.
The Moderna vaccine secured by the center was found to be about 95 percent effective at preventing COVID-19 infections in phase 3 clinical trials, the Washington Post reported in December last year.
The Moderna vaccine has received emergency-use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration for the vaccination of individuals aged 18 or older, the report added.
In its statement on Tuesday, Moderna said that it has also received authorization for the vaccine from health agencies in Canada, Israel, the EU, the UK, Switzerland and Singapore, and that authorizations are under review by the WHO and in other countries.
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