AMN/ WEB DESK
Taiwan is mobilizing its diplomatic corps to secure a speedier delivery of COVID-19 vaccines. The quest has become more urgent since a sudden rise in domestic cases on an island that has vaccinated less than 1% of its population. Taiwan has reported more than 700 new domestic infections during the past week, leading to new curbs in the capital, Taipei.
Taiwan, a major semiconductor manufacturing hub, has only received about 300,000 shots so far for its more than 23 million people, all AstraZeneca Plc vaccines, and those are rapidly running out. Hsiao Bi-khim, the de facto Taiwanese ambassador to the United States said that, she is in negotiations and striving for it.
As per the reports published in today’s Taiwan’s official News Agency, Taipei’s top official in Washington said she was in talks with the United States for a share of the COVID-19 vaccine doses President Joe Biden plans to send abroad.
She said that although vaccine purchases were the remit of Taiwan’s health ministry, her office’s role was to talk to the United States about speeding up those requests.
President Biden had said that the United States would send at least 20 million more vaccine doses abroad by the end of June.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, today, said they hoped to provide domestically-developed vaccines before the end of July, and that more imported ones were on the way.