Taiwan’s latest shipment of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines is beginning its two-stage rollout across the country on Thursday. That comes after the Food and Drug Administration finished carrying out testing and safety checks on the batch of 410,000 doses.
The new doses go into circulation just as Taiwan comes close to depleting its available vaccine stock. According to the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control, as of Thursday, 325,247 people have had a COVID-19 vaccination. Vaccination rates have accelerated significantly since the country recently began experiencing its worst outbreak of the virus so far.
The Deputy Commander of the Central Epidemic Command Center, Chen Tsung-yen, says the rollout of new doses will happen in two stages. He says stage one will begin with a rollout of 150,000 doses on Thursday. Those doses will be for people in priority groups one, two, and three living in Taipei and New Taipei. Outside of that area, people in group one will be the priority, as well as people who need a second dose in order to travel abroad. That’s because the recent outbreak has been mostly concentrated in the northern metropolitan area of Taipei and New Taipei.
Priority groups one and two include workers in hospitals, clinics, and quarantine facilities, along with pandemic prevention workers, airport personnel, and certain public service workers. Group three includes people with a higher risk of COVID-19 exposure due to their profession. That includes flight crews, sailors, quarantine taxi drivers, quarantine hotel personnel, and port workers.
Chen says the second stage will begin on June 10 with a rollout of the remaining 260,000 doses. Those will be for people in groups one to three across the whole country who still haven’t been vaccinated.
Chen says authorities will distribute vaccines between local authorities according to the number of local people in the relevant priority groups who still haven’t been vaccinated.