The Taiwan office of Amnesty International on Tuesday called on the government to donate surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses to developing countries, where it said only around four percent of people have been fully vaccinated.
Amnesty’s comments come after Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said last Friday it would destroy some 278,602 unused doses of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech brands that had expired.
According to the CECC, around two million doses of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine will expire by May, including about 300,000 doses at the end of March.
At a press conference in Taipei, Amnesty International Taiwan Secretary-General Chiu I-ling (???) said unused vaccines should not go to waste as only around 4 percent of the people in low-income countries across the world had been fully vaccinated.
The government should consider making better use of its vaccine stock by donating it to such places in need instead of letting them go to waste, she added.
Chiu’s comments reflected the annual report of Amnesty International, which notes that while booster shots were delivered to citizens of rich nations in 2021, millions in the developing countries still awaited their first jab.
The report, which was launched Tuesday, argued that “low immunization rates allowed new variants to flourish, putting us all at risk of vaccine-resistant mutations and lengthening the pandemic.”
New Power Party lawmaker Chiu Hsien-chih (???) echoed Amnesty’s stance, saying at the press event that Taiwan should make donations to countries facing vaccine shortages if it has a vaccine surplus.
Chiu added he believed that the Taiwanese people would welcome such a donation made by the government as a contribution to the international community.
CECC spokesperson Chuang Jen-hsiang (???) has said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was looking to donate unused Astra-Zeneca vaccine does to Taiwan’s diplomatic allies.
Chuang has also mooted the possibility of the doses being given to research institutes in Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for Southeast and East Asia Emerlynne Gil, who took part in the press conference virtually, said the group found “further deterioration in the human rights situation in Asia and the Pacific” in 2021 compared to the previous year.
For Taiwan, Amnesty’s annual report also took note of inadequate legal protections for Indigenous peoples from mining operations in areas designated as traditional grounds for dwelling and hunting, as well as discriminative COVID-19 measures that curbed only migrant workers’ freedom of movement.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel