The US donation of 2.5 million Moderna vaccines arrived in Taiwan around 4:30 pm on Sunday. The shipment comes as Taiwan faces a vaccine shortage amidst its largest outbreak since the pandemic began.
On June 6, three US Senators visited Taiwan and announced a US donation of 750,000 vaccines to Taiwan. The US more than tripled that amount when it flew the vaccines over this weekend.
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said Sunday in a Facebook post that "this donation reflects our commitment to Taiwan as a trusted friend and an important security partner."
At the CECC daily press conference on Sunday, Health Minister Chen Shih-chung thanked the US for the donation. He said the donation came just in time to help Taiwan during its domestic outbreak and vaccine shortage.
Only about 6.4% of Taiwan’s population of over 23.5 million have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Taiwan has signed contracts to purchase 5.05 million doses of Moderna, 10 million of AstraZeneca, and 4.76 million doses of unspecified brands through the COVAX program. But delivery has been slow, and Taiwan has received less than 5 million vaccines so far, including recent donations of over 3.7 million vaccines by the US and Japan.
It has also signed contracts to buy 10 million doses of vaccines from two Taiwanese companies, but these have yet to start Phase 3 trials.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration achieved much success and high approval ratings over the government’s early containment of COVID-19, but Tsai has seen her approval ratings drop during the recent outbreak and vaccine shortage.
Amidst the shortage, Taiwan also has recently seen private entities such as Foxconn Founder Terry Gou’s YongLin Foundation step up to volunteer to buy 5 million doses from vaccines by BioNTech.
Taiwan’s government had earlier tried to buy vaccines from the German manufacturer but said the deal was blocked by China. Now the government is working with Gou and TSMC to try to buy 10 million vaccines from BioNTech.