Taiwan’s health ministry is expected to expand COVID-19 vaccine eligibility next week. The government began administering doses of Astra Zeneca’s (AZ) COVID-19 vaccine on March 22. Under current regulations, only frontline medical personnel who come in direct contact with COVID-19 are allowed to receive vaccinations.
So far, officials have only administered around 10,000 shots of the vaccine.
Survey results released by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) this month found that only a third of medical workers at hospitals that treat COVID-19 patients in Taiwan are willing to get the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
The only COVID-19 vaccines that Taiwan has received so far is a batch of 117,000 doses from AstraZeneca. Taiwan has signed contracts to purchase 10 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, over 5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, and 4.7 million doses of vaccines through COVAX.
In a report to the legislature on Wednesday morning, Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said he expects to open up vaccinations to all medical personnel next week.