Taiwan President Receives Locally Made Vaccine First To Assure Public Of Its Safety And Efficacy

Leading by example, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen was vaccinated for the coronavirus in a Taipei hospital on Monday with the locally developed Medigen vaccine, Kyodo News reported.

Photo Insert: Tsai Ing-wen, the President of Taiwan, is the first person in the country to receive the locally produced Medigen COVID-19 vaccine.

By becoming the first to receive the jab, Tsai hopes to inspire confidence in the new vaccine, developed by local vaccine maker Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp., to demonstrate that it is effective and safe.

The rollout for the Medigen shot began the same day as Taiwan struggles to secure vaccine doses from overseas in a major push to increase inoculation rates.

Even though community cases began spreading on the island from mid-May in the latest wave, the government has since succeeded in curbing the virus's spread through strict measures including a total ban on restaurant dining.

But the government plans to continue enforcing the level-two COVID-19 alert, the third-highest of four levels, for the time being as the highly contagious Delta variant has spread abroad and the rate of vaccinations among the Taiwanese has been slow.

Roughly 40 percent of the population had received at least one dose of vaccine by Friday, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry. About 600,000 people have signed up to be inoculated with Medigen.

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