Taiwan’s plummet in Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking of major economies that have best fought the COVID-19 pandemic should serve as “a serious warning” to the nation, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday.
In the edition of the list released on Monday, which covered 53 economies, Taiwan fell to 44th, after ranking 15th last month and second in December last year.
The nation’s slip to near the bottom of the rankings “is not only a serious warning sign for Taiwan, but it also verified warnings by the international media that the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been overly complacent in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a failure to obtain enough vaccines,” the KMT said in a statement.
Photo courtesy of the Chinese Nationalist Party
Despite early warnings from foreign media, the response of Tsai’s administration “drifted into arbitrariness,” the party added.
The KMT accused the central government of refusing to heed the advice of experts, saying that its decision to implement a three-day quarantine for airline crews had been made “rashly.”
The self-discipline and cooperation of the public had earned Taiwan international approval early in the pandemic, the KMT said.
“However, the central government neglected its responsibility to procure vaccines,” it said.
The KMT also accused the government of placing extensive limits on the ability of private groups to assist in the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines.
This has resulted in a stagnant domestic vaccine supply, as well as the nation’s reliance on vaccine donations from other countries, it added.
The arrival of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant has put the health and safety of Taiwanese at greater risk, the KMT said.
The party urged the Tsai administration to “humbly review and improve” its response to COVID-19 and called for a more vigorous effort to obtain internationally approved vaccines.
Separately yesterday, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) also commented on Taiwan’s ranking in the Bloomberg list.
The ranking "may just be a number, but the lives and jobs we have lost are not,” he wrote on Twitter, adding the hashtag #TaiwanNeedsVaccines.
Chiang wrote on Facebook that at the beginning of this year, other countries were rushing to purchase vaccines — in some cases preordering enough doses to inoculate their populations several times over.
However, the Central Epidemic Command Center “was still not thinking about actively seeking out vaccines,” he said.
In February, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said that there was no urgent need for vaccinations, Chiang said, adding that the government had been arrogant and displayed a lack of risk awareness “from top to bottom.”
After the local outbreak began, the government should have “woken up,” Chiang said.
People are dying every day from infections, he said, urging the government to “feel the public’s pain.”
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