Children are less likely to have priority in getting vaccinated against COVID-19, Lee Ping-ing (李秉穎), a member of the Central Epidemic Command Center’s (CECC) specialist advisory panel, said yesterday.
Lee, a physician in National Taiwan University Hospital’s division of pediatric infectious diseases, made the remark on the sidelines of a conference on the effects of COVID-19 on children’s health in Taipei.
Clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccine candidates have not included children, he said, adding that statistical data suggests that children do not have a higher risk of infection and that the risks of them developing serious complications or dying are also relatively low.
Photo: AFP
When effective vaccines become available in Taiwan, children are unlikely to be at the front of the vaccination line, Lee said.
Three types of vaccine candidates have progressed faster: messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, vaccines based on adenoviral vectors and vaccines based on recombinant proteins, he said.
The mRNA vaccines are easier and faster to mass produce, but they present higher risks of systemic or local adverse events, and require ultra-low temperatures for storage and transport, Lee said.
The vaccines based on adenoviral vectors are considered relatively safe, but they have not been widely administered as a commercial vaccine, he said, adding that the vaccine might be less effective in people who already have antibodies that neutralize adenoviruses, and it is not suitable for people with weakened immune systems.
The recombinant-protein-based vaccines are thought to be the safest and most efficient, but they are more difficult to produce quickly, Lee said.
On Friday, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), the CECC’s spokesperson, said that Taiwan can buy the vaccine that Oxford University is developing with British drugmaker AstraZeneca through the COVAX allocation platform.
Foreign media have reported that the vaccine shows an “encouraging” immune response in older adults, and that 99 percent of those given the vaccine in a mid-term clinical trial developed antibodies.
Asked if Taiwan can buy the vaccine, Chuang said that the center has started negotiations to acquire it in August and September next year, but he declined to provide further details.
Taiwan can buy the vaccine through COVAX, he said, adding that the government has also contacted the manufacturer regarding issues such as quantity and timing.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be cheaper than the one developed by Pfizer in collaboration with BioNTech, and easier to ship, as it can be stored at 2°C to 8°C, Chuang said.
The Pfizer vaccine, an mRNA vaccine, must be stored at ultra-low temperatures — as low as minus-80°C.
The CECC has budgeted NT$11.5 billion (US$399.03 million) for the purchase of 30 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, which would be enough to vaccinate 15 million people, Chuang said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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