Taiwan to access Novavax Covid-19 vaccine through the Covax Facility
- The island has struggled to vaccinate its population amid global supply shortages as it battles infection clusters
- No details have been given on how many doses Taiwan will receive or when they are expected to arrive
Taiwan’s vaccine orders include 4.76 million doses from the global sharing scheme, though so far it has only received slightly more than 600,000, all from AstraZeneca.
Novavax, which already has an agreement to supply its vaccine to the Covax Facility, said on Friday that Taiwan had opted to receive its doses through the scheme, without giving further details.
Taiwan’s Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said this week the government had been in talks with Novavax, though also did not provide details of numbers or a timeline.
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Queues at Taiwan Covid-19 testing site as the island battles surge in cases
Taiwan has struggled to speed up its vaccination programme due to global supply shortages, with only around 8 per cent of its 23.5 million people having received at least one of the two-dose vaccine regimen as it deals with a cluster of domestic infections.