A surge in local COVID-19 infections over the past week has dented the government’s much-lauded success in containing the virus and revealed a critical flaw in Taiwan’s fight against the disease: an inadequate vaccine rollout.
The lack of a domestically produced vaccine, difficulty obtaining foreign jabs due to governments prioritizing their own citizens, vaccine hoarding by some countries and suspected meddling by Beijing to obstruct vaccine sales to Taiwan have stymied Taipei’s efforts to secure a sufficient amount of COVID-19 vaccine doses.
Meanwhile, the reluctance of Taiwanese to get the relatively few available AstraZeneca jabs doused the government’s attempts to kick-start a vaccination program.