A new Moderna COVID-19 vaccine that targets the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant of SARS-CoV-2 is undergoing lot release testing and is expected to be available by next week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that people aged 65 or older would be first in line for the product.
Moderna’s Spikevax XBB.1.5 COVID-19 vaccine received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday last week.
CDC Deputy Director-General Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) said the vaccine is expected to be available by the end of this month, hopefully before the Mid-Autumn Festival long weekend from Friday next week to Oct. 1, with people aged 65 or older to be prioritized.
Photo courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control
“Our long-term monitoring data show that the majority of severe COVID-19 and COVID-19-related cases are people aged 65 or older,” Tseng said, adding that eligibility would be expanded according to vaccination rates.
CDC data showed that 78 percent of people hospitalized for COVID-19 were aged 65 or older.
The first shipment of the vaccine to Taiwan consisted of about 700,000 doses, with more expected in the next few months to take the total to about 2 million doses by the end of next month and 6 million by the end of the year, the CDC said.
There are two types of multi-dose vials. One has five doses of 0.5mL, with each dose containing 50 micrograms of the mRNA ingredient, and the other has 10 doses of 0.25mL, with each dose containing 25 micrograms of the mRNA ingredient, Tseng said, adding that the latter is recommended for children aged six months to 11 years.
For children aged six months to four years, the CDC recommends two doses at least 28 days apart for those who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19, one dose for those who have received a first dose at least 28 days prior and one dose for those who have finished a primary series of two doses at least 84 days earlier, she said.
The CDC also recommends one 0.25mL dose for children aged five to 11 years who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19, and one 0.5mL dose for people aged 12 or older who have been vaccinated, with the most recent dose being at least 84 days prior, she said.
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
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
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
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