The Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says that frontline pandemic prevention staff are the top priority for the next round of vaccinations. The news on Thursday comes one day after a new shipment of 400,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Taiwan.
CDC Director-General Chou Jih-haw says his top priority is getting COVID-19 vaccines to medical personnel, quarantine center workers, COVID-19 testing staff, and quarantine taxi drivers. That’s because these groups are the most likely to come into contact with infected people. According to Taiwan’s vaccination priority list, all of them were already eligible to be vaccinated. But takeup among these groups has been relatively slow.
Taiwan has suspended self-paid COVID-19 vaccinations. At the moment, priority groups one to eight are eligible to get the shot, along with close contacts and family members of groups one to three. Those priority groups include medical staff, pandemic prevention staff, international aviation and maritime workers, foreign diplomats, athletes, police, care workers, military personnel, and people aged 65 and above.
Deputy Health Minister Hsueh Jui-yuan says authorities will distribute vaccines to regional governments based on the number of eligible people in the area. He also says that the government is doing all it can to speed up delivery of vaccine doses and buy more of them. But Hsueh says that until doses are safely on the plane to Taiwan, there is no way to be sure when they will arrive.
Taiwan has signed agreements to purchase 29.86 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. That includes 10 million from AstraZeneca, 10.05 million from domestic manufacturers, 5.05 million from Moderna, and 4.76 million through international vaccine initiative COVAX.