Скачать или смотреть FTV exclusive: health minister talks COVID vaccines

Health minister Chen Shih-chung was a special guest on an FTV political talk show on Thursday. The minister spoke at length on the hot topic of the day - Taiwan''s first batch of COVID vaccines, which are undergoing government inspection.

Chen Shih-chung
Health minister
As everyone has got a so-called urgent need, once vaccine supplies reach a certain baseline, I believe that the global dash for doses will ease up. With the AstraZeneca vaccines, we must first perform a sealing test. That will be handled by the FDA. We''re actually moving quite fast with this first batch. The documentation for this shipment is extremely comprehensive. We''re aiming to complete all the testing in as little as seven days. But I have told the FDA that this is the first batch, so we cannot be careless during inspection.

Chen said he''s asked the National Health Research Institutes to set up a platform, where side effects from the vaccine can be published and made known to the public. As for who gets the jabs first, the minister said again that front-line medical staff will get priority.