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.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
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