The government should tell the public when Taiwan is expected to have vaccination coverage of at least 60 percent of the population, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Culture and Communications Committee director-general Alicia Wang (王育敏) said yesterday.
So far, the government has not been able to give people a clear response as to when that goal is likely to be achieved, Wang told an online news conference from Taipei.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has a responsibility to answer this question and should not avoid it, Wang said.
Photo courtesy of the KMT Legislative Caucus Office
“Taiwanese are very worried right now,” and what they hope for the most is for COVID-19 vaccines to arrive soon, she said.
Foreign and local experts, as well as reports by international media outlets, agree that Taiwan’s lack of COVID-19 vaccines has formed a “breach” in its COVID-19 prevention efforts, she said.
So far, the nation has only obtained about 710,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses, she said.
However, nearly 30 million vaccine doses would be needed for 60 percent coverage, Wang said.
The Tsai administration has been inefficient in purchasing and administering COVID-19 vaccines, she said.
Globally, Taiwan ranks near the bottom in terms of its COVID-19 vaccination rate, which is far from that of neighboring countries such as South Korea and Japan, Wang said.
As of Friday, only 1.2 COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered for every 100 people in Taiwan, she said, citing data from the online publication Our World in Data.
That is compared with Israel’s rate of 121.9 doses per 100 people, she said, adding that other countries, including China, India, Singapore, the UK and the US, have far higher vaccination rates.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has been focused on international cooperation so that his country can manufacture vaccines, the KMT said in a statement.
In contrast, despite facing a “less stressful” domestic COVID-19 situation over the past year, the government appears to not have a complete plan for vaccine acquisition and development, it said.
“The KMT urges the Tsai administration to do everything it can to secure more vaccines for Taiwan at the soonest possible time and make public in detail their plans to do so,” the KMT said. “Only by doing so will people be effectively protected from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
In related news, a group of China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) members held a small protest outside the Central Epidemic Command Center in Taipei yesterday afternoon, demanding that health authorities allow Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines to be used in Taiwan.
CUPP founder Chang An-le (張安樂), in a video released from Shanghai on Sunday, said that CUPP members would shadow Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) wherever he goes to pressure him to accept Chinese-made vaccines.
“Only the Chinese Communist Party has real love for Taiwan, Taiwanese people’s health and their well-being. The [Taiwanese] politicos only love Taiwanese dollars and their political power,” he said in the video.
Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers said that Chang’s words and CUPP members’ actions amounted to “gangsters using blackmail,” and asked for the issue to be investigated, as Chang had threatened the health minister.
Additional reporting by Chen Yu-fu
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