President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Vice President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday morning received COVID-19 vaccine booster shots, as the government races to increase the nation’s vaccination and booster rates amid a domestic outbreak fueled by the highly infectious Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.
Tsai and Lai each received a shot of the domestically developed Medigen COVID-19 vaccine at National Taiwan University’s College of Medicine.
Tsai later described the process on Facebook as “smooth” and “painless,” urging people who received a second vaccine dose more than 12 weeks ago to get a booster as soon as possible.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The Central Epidemic Command Center said that anyone aged 18 or older who has received two shots of a Medigen, Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine can choose any of those vaccines or an AstraZeneca vaccine as a booster.
Only a half-dose of the Moderna vaccine would be administered as a booster, in keeping with the company’s recommendations, it said.
People who received two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine should choose a different brand for better protection, it added.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Tsai urged people to continue observing the center’s guidelines, adding that many countries were experiencing a new wave of infections, as Taiwan also faces fresh COVID-19 challenges.
Tsai received her first Medigen dose on Aug. 23 last year, shortly after the Taiwanese pharmaceutical company was granted emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration.
Lai was vaccinated a few days later, and both of them had their second dose on Sept. 30.
Tsai and Lai were said to have chosen the Medigen vaccine to bolster confidence in the domestically produced vaccine.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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