The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday urged the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) to share the progress of international COVID-19 vaccine procurement and domestic vaccine development, accusing the center of giving people high expectations which it might not be able to realize.
Urging the center to “stop domestic propaganda,” the TPP posted on Facebook a list of news headlines published between September last year and this month, in which the center had discussed its progress in purchasing COVID-19 vaccines.
“We ask Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) to ‘undertake no more than he can perform’ on the issue of vaccines, and clearly explain the schedule for purchasing vaccines, so that Taiwanese do not hold high hopes only to be disappointed in the end,” the TPP wrote on Facebook.
Photo: Reuters
The party said that since September last year, Chen had more than once announced that Taiwan has signed a contract and paid the deposit to purchase vaccines, as well as saying in December last year that Taiwan had secured nearly 20 million doses of vaccines.
While Chen repeatedly guaranteed vaccines, “the situation did not go as expected, and now he is avoiding announcing the schedule of when vaccines would be obtained,” the party wrote.
The Democratic Progressive Party should be more careful when speaking to the media and not “build castles in the sky,” the TPP said.
Chen, who heads the center, yesterday said that although the TPP urged him to “undertake no more than he can perform,” that is exactly what he has been doing, adding that he previously said he would only announce vaccine procurement progress when a contract has been signed and the deposit paid.
“According to foreign news reports, many countries are snatching up vaccines, but it does not mean we will give up,” he said. “We will continue to try to obtain vaccines through existing channels.”
As for the development of domestic vaccines, the center would not relax its standards on vaccine safety and effectiveness, but it would support vaccine makers by streamlining the application process, Chen said, adding that the center is discussing how to further support the manufacturing of vaccines once approval is gained.
On Saturday, Chen said that Taiwan could face delays in the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines from British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca, after the EU a day earlier introduced tighter rules on vaccine exports.
The new rules, which are to be enforced through March 31, stipulate that exports of COVID-19 vaccines produced in the bloc have to be approved by EU authorities.
Chen said that Taiwan has been in touch with COVAX, a WHO initiative to ensure access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries, over the possible delay, but a reply had not yet been received.
Additional reporting by CNA
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