TAIWAN CLAIMS CHINA BLOCKED DEAL FOR COVID-19 SHOTS

Taiwan directly accused China for the first time on Wednesday of blocking a deal with Germany's BioNTech for COVID-19 vaccines, in an escalating war of words after Beijing offered the shots to the island via a Chinese company.

Taiwan has millions of shots on order, from AstraZeneca Plc and Moderna, Inc. but has received only slightly more than 700,000 to date, and has only been able to vaccinate about 1% of its population as COVID-19 cases surge, Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard reported for Reuters.

While Taiwan has previously said it had been unable to sign a final contract with BioNTech, it had only implied that Chinese pressure was to blame.

China claims Taiwan as its territory and frequently puts pressure on countries and firms to curtail their dealings with the island.

China's Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd. said on Saturday it was willing to provide Taiwan with BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines. Fosun signed a deal with BioNTech to exclusively develop and commercialize the vaccine developed using BioNTech's mRNA technology in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

But Tsai said the island would only buy directly from the original manufacturers or discuss purchases with them via the COVAX global vaccine sharing scheme.

President Tsai Ing-wen told a meeting of her ruling Democratic Progressive Party that orders for the AstraZeneca and Moderna shots had been "smoothly" booked. "As for Germany's BioNTech, we were close to completing the contract with the original German plant, but because of China's intervention, up to now there's been no way to complete it," she said.

Taiwan, which has a population of more than 23 million people, had bought nearly 30 million shots, Tsai said, without giving details.

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