Taiwan’s COVID-19 prevention efforts should not be politicized ahead of the upcoming local elections in November, head of the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) Victor Wang (???) said Monday.
Wang made the comments at a press conference after the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) accused the government of deliberately withholding information on the per-dose price of COVID-19 vaccines.
On Aug. 19, the KMT’s legislative caucus criticized the Ministry of Health and Welfare for classifying COVID-19 vaccine procurement data as confidential and saying the information will remain sealed until Feb. 25, 2051.
It said the vaccines were purchased using taxpayers’ money and therefore the public has a right to know, while lawmakers also need to monitor how taxpayers’ money has been spent during the COVID-19 pandemic, following reports that private buyers in Taiwan purchased COVID-19 vaccines at a significantly lower price than the government.
At the event, Wang revealed that vaccine purchases to date have cost an average of NT$765 (US$25.41) per dose, with a total of 53.51 million COVID-19 vaccine doses purchased at a total cost of NT$40.86 billion.
However, Wang said that it was not possible to provide a breakdown of the government’s vaccine purchases by brand, citing binding agreements with drugmakers.
He defended the government’s position on keeping COVID-19 vaccine procurement details confidential, saying the practice is common in Europe as well as countries such as Japan and the United States, where only the number of vaccine doses purchased and total cost are disclosed publicly.
According to the CECC head, the government is currently in talks to buy the next-generation COVID-19 vaccines.
The cost of vaccines is covered by a confidentiality clause in the contracts that varies between different drugmakers and can range from five to seven years, or be indefinite, Wang said.
Regarding the health ministry’s statement that the information will remain confidential for 30 years, he said this is currently how official documents are labeled, but that does not mean they will necessarily be kept sealed for that amount of time.
When a contract’s confidentiality clause has expired, all relevant information pertaining to vaccine purchases will naturally become available to the public, he explained.
Meanwhile, Wang said the government was not avoiding lawmakers’ supervision over vaccine procurement, noting that the Legislative Yuan has a vaccine procurement review group to oversee such matters.
At a separate event Monday, Kuomintang Taipei mayoral candidate Chiang Wan-an (???) told reporters that he previously served as convener of the vaccine procurement review group at the legislature.
He claimed that in one of the meetings he attended, the health ministry redacted those parts of documents relating to price, quantity and arrival schedule of a COVID-19 vaccine in a purchasing contract the ministry was asked to provide for review by the group.
The mayoral candidate said there were exceptions in the contract’s confidentiality clause that stated relevant information could be released if required by government agencies, courts or regulatory agencies.
Chiang criticized the government and former CECC head Chen Shih-chung (???), who is also running in the Taipei mayoral race for the Democratic Progressive Party, for preventing the opposition from monitoring how taxpayers’ money has been spent.
In response, Chen said the government can provide all relevant information as long as it does not conflict with provisions in the contract.
However, he did not respond to Chiang’s claims about the redacted parts of the documents, except to say that the group consisted of over a dozen lawmakers and met in October last year having asked to review a vaccine purchase contract signed by the government.
The information was made available by Nov. 1, Chen said.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel