An additional 105,000 publicly funded flu vaccine doses would be available to eligible people from Thursday next week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday.
TTY Biopharm Co had won the NT$12.71 million (US$386,781) contract to supply the cell culture flu vaccines, which are suitable for children older than six months, adolescents and adults, the CDC said in a statement.
The CDC had been asked to procure the additional doses by the Executive Yuan in response to soaring demand for flu vaccines.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
Administration of the additional doses is expected to start on Thursday next week as planned for people aged 65 or older, infants older than six months old, preschool children and those at higher risk of contracting the flu, the agency said.
The government-funded vaccines are to be distributed to local health bureaus on Monday, which would then send them to their planned vaccination sites, the CDC said.
At a news conference yesterday, CDC Deputy Director-General Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) advised at-risk people to get their dose once the vaccine becomes available to prevent serious illness and death.
Tseng said that if the flu vaccination rate for at-risk groups is not as high as expected, the CDC might launch a second round of free flu vaccination campaigns.
The nation has seen a surge in vaccination demand driven by the death of actress and singer Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) at the age of 48 from flu-related complications on Feb. 2.
A daily high of 73,000 government-funded influenza vaccinations were given last week, with the vaccine stockpile to run out soon, CDC data showed.
As such, the government decided to purchase an additional 100,000 doses of the influenza vaccine for at-risk groups, the CDC said.
Since Jan. 1, the government has been offering free flu shots to all unvaccinated residents aged six months or older until supplies run out.
As of Monday, 6.573 million publicly funded flu vaccines had been administered, with 13,000 doses left, CDC data showed.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
RSS