President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday thanked Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) and entertainer Janet Chia (賈永婕) for their private efforts to secure vaccines and equipment to fight COVID-19.
A surge in false reports about the private initiatives must be addressed before the nation can return to the important task of battling the COVID-19 outbreak, Tsai wrote on Facebook.
Citing Gou’s statement on Thursday morning, Tsai said that the Ministry of Health and Welfare is working closely to help the tycoon import Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines from Germany.
Photo: Screen grab from Instagram
Stories circulating that the government is obstructing private efforts to procure vaccines “are incorrect,” she said.
“Importing vaccines is not like going to the supermarket; an intricate process of multilateral, international negotiations, as well as realpolitik concerns, is involved,” she wrote.
Tsai also called Chia — who raised funds to buy 342 high flow nasal cannulas for distribution to hospitals across the nation — to thank her for the donation and extend her sympathies for the treatment she has received, as some have questioned her motives.
An investigation into allegations by an anonymous report that the initiative had breached regulations governing charities found no wrongdoing, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said on Wednesday.
Tsai said she also called and thanked television commentator Frances Huang (黃光芹), who spearheaded an initiative to buy portable air-conditioners for people working at outdoor COVID-19 test stations. Huang similarly became the subject of an investigation, but has been cleared of wrongdoing.
Huang has complained about the probe, saying it was a private fundraising effort among friends.
“Taiwanese society has a beneficent culture of charity that we should cherish. We should not scold people for wanting to help or make up rumors about them,” Tsai said.
“Divisive words are not helpful to fighting the pandemic,” she added.
Gou has said that any report about his initiative to buy Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that he or the Yonglin Foundation, which he founded, did not clear should be deemed false.
Gou said that Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, had personally assured him that no effort would be spared to assist him in obtaining the vaccines.
Meanwhile, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) called on author Yang Tu (楊渡) retract his statement that the government is obstructing Taiwanese groups from procuring vaccines abroad.
Yang, a former chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Culture and Communications Committee, made the remarks in an article published by the Chinese-language China Times on May 29.
Kuan said that government comments about Gou’s and Buddhist monastery Fo Guang Shan’s (佛光山) separate efforts to purchase foreign vaccines are factual and accurate.
The government has said that foreign vaccine makers — including BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson, which Fo Guang Shan was said to be talking to — have refused to deal with any entity that is not backed by the national government, she said.
“What blocked [Gou’s and Fo Guan Shan’s] efforts is not the government, but the vaccine companies themselves,” Kuang said, adding that the Tsai administration was being blamed unfairly.
As Gou has clearly stated, the government is doing all it can to help private efforts to obtain vaccines from foreign sources, she said.
“Will Yang acknowledge the truth and restore the CECC’s good name?” she asked.
Additional reporting by Chien Hui-ju
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