People in the top three priority groups and the seventh priority group for COVID-19 vaccination are required to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 1, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.
A policy announced by the CECC on Sunday requires staff at 24 types of establishments supervised by the education, economics, labor, and health and welfare ministries to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 1.
Deputy Minister of the Interior Chen Tsung-yen (陳宗彥), deputy head of the CECC, yesterday said the vaccination requirement has been expanded to include people in the top three and the seventh priority groups, and also workers at correctional facilities and funeral service providers.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
The four priority groups are workers who maintain the nation’s healthcare capacity, disease prevention capacity, national security and normal social function, as well as people who work in environments with a high risk of infection.
As people must have had two vaccine doses for more than 14 days to be considered “fully vaccinated,” people who are subject to the policy should get their second dose no later than Friday next week, the CECC said.
New employees must provide a negative COVID-19 test result from either an antigen rapid test, an at-home rapid test or a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test taken within three days of the first day of work after the deadline, Chen said.
People who have recovered from COVID-19 and have a “Notice for Release From Isolation Treatment” issued within three months of the deadline would not need to provide a vaccination record, but new employees who have recovered from an infection would still need to provide a negative PCR test result, he said.
People who have a vaccine exemption or cannot get vaccinated due to personal reasons must be tested every week, he said.
A total of 193,419 vaccine doses were administered on Tuesday, bringing the nation’s first-dose vaccination rate to 78.32 percent and full vaccination rate to 62.13 percent, CECC data showed.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), the CECC’s spokesman, said that a batch of Moderna COVID-19 vaccines that were to expire on Tuesday were all administered prior to that, but about 40,000 Moderna doses are to expire on Sunday.
The CECC plans to start administering second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to adolescents aged 12 to 17 from Dec. 20, but as there is sufficient supply, local governments that have completed on-campus vaccination arrangements can start as early as Wednesday next week, Chuang said.
The CECC yesterday reported five imported cases of COVID-19, people who arrived from Ethiopia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
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