• Military
• WMD
• Intelligence

• Security Menu                     

• Systems
• Industry
• Operations
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Space

4 KMT counties aim to buy 5 million doses of Pfizer-BNT vaccine

ROC Central News Agency

07/14/2021 08:34 PM

Taipei, July 14 (CNA) The main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) is joining with four counties governed by the party to have licensed drug companies apply to purchase 5 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT) COVID-19 vaccine, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said Wednesday.

Chiang said at a KMT Central Standing Committee meeting that the party will apply for the purchase with Nantou, Yunlin, Hualien and Taitung, and he hoped the government would soon complete procedures to allow the counties to negotiate their own purchases of the vaccines.

He also thanked Taiwan-friendly countries and businesses in the private sector for their generous donations of COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan.

However, Chiang also urged the government to push ahead with the delivery of the vaccines the country has ordered and called for opening the private sector and local governments to negotiate vaccine purchases on their own.

 

Ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators criticized the KMT for its proposal, saying that cities and counties governed by the KMT have lagged behind others in vaccinating their residents.

Chiang responded, however, that there are big differences in the regional distribution of medical resources, and argued that the COVID-19 vaccination drive should not be taken as a competition among cities and counties.

If vaccinations are manipulated into a political issue, it will only drive a wedge between the central and local governments but do little to help the fight against the disease.

Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政), DPP caucus secretary-general, contended Wednesday that while DPP legislators have consistently called on people to get COVID-19 shots, the KMT has used various means to discourage the general public from taking the jabs.

Lo said 15.9 percent of the country's population had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of Tuesday, but the one-dose rates in Taichung and New Taipei (both run by KMT mayors) of 13.7 percent and 14.3 percent, respectively, were the lowest among the six special municipalities in Taiwan.

But the one-dose rates in the DPP-run cities of Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Taoyuan of 15.80 percent, 15.90 percent and 17.30 percent, respectively, were roughly the same and all well behind the 22.20 percent in Taipei, which is run by an independent mayor.

The DPP caucus also produced data showing that the top four cities and counties with the largest percentage of vaccines yet to be used were the KMT-run locales of Nantou, Hualien and Taitung counties and New Taipei at 67.9 percent, 58.5 percent, 56.6 percent and 46.3 percent, respectively.

Those figures were far off the official Taiwan Centers for Disease Control figures, which showed Nantou with 40.1 percent of its vaccines unused, followed by Taitung at 31.8 percent, the DPP-run Chiayi County at 26.3 percent, and Hualien at 24.3 percent as of July 13.

(By Liu Kuang-ting, Wang Yang-yu and Evelyn Kao)

Enditem/ls