TAIPEI • Taiwan's government faces mounting pressure to work with China to obtain Covid-19 vaccines, a politically unpalatable option for officials in Taipei struggling with an outbreak that risks disrupting technology supply chains.
President Tsai Ing-wen's administration this week ruled out attempts by some local officials to directly obtain Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines from Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group.
The China-based drugmaker, which has an agreement to develop and distribute them in the Greater China region that includes Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, has repeatedly said it wants to supply the vaccine to Taiwan.
Ms Tsai and her party have blamed China for scuttling an earlier order of millions of Pfizer-BioNTech jabs, although Beijing has rejected that claim.
She said this week that vaccine procurement will be handled by the central government as it involves emergency authorisation process and distribution.
Yesterday, several Taiwanese officials defended the government's moves, with Health Minister Chen Shih-chung saying the deal with BioNTech fell apart after the company "strongly suggested" the removal of the word "country" in the press statement announcing the arrangement.
While Taiwan agreed to the wording change, he said the deal collapsed "not because of something within the contract".
"Both sides had reached consensus and we had got the government's approval," Mr Chen said.
"We just needed to exchange the contract. So you can see there are many uncertainties, and we were blocked at the last minute.
"We still wanted to follow up afterwards, but there was no deal."
Mr Chen added that Taiwan would potentially speak with Fosun only if they got authorisation from BioNTech or Pfizer.
Taiwan Cabinet spokesman Lo Ping-cheng said separately the government was more interested in buying Western vaccines than Chinese shots, which have been shown in some studies to have lower efficacy rates.
"If we directly buy vaccines from China, there may be concerns about security, efficacy and legal issues," Mr Lo said in a briefing.
"Instead of asking China to provide vaccines, we should all ask China to let go and not to intervene with Taiwan buying vaccines directly from international pharma companies so that it can meet expectations of Taiwan nationals and our national interests."
The government in Taipei views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign nation, even while it avoids a formal declaration of independence that could trigger a war.
China, meanwhile, claims the island as its own territory.
After months with zero daily Covid-19 cases, the health authorities in Taipei are now grappling with over 500 cases a day amid growing criticism for being complacent about a vaccination drive.
Taiwan reported 667 new domestic Covid-19 cases yesterday, including 266 taken from a backlog of test results confirmed over the last several days, following delays in reporting positive tests.
BLOOMBERG, REUTERS
