Taipei, July 4 (CNA) Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), who is currently in the process of trying to secure BioNTech (BNT) COVID-19 vaccine doses for Taiwan, said Sunday that the best way to guarantee everything goes smoothly is if people stop speculating about the issue.
The best way to ensure Taiwan can obtain a sufficient supply of vaccines is to “stop reporting and speculating on the process,” as these actions could delay proceedings, Guo said in a statement.
Guo singled out the sharing of “speculative reports” by international media organizations that “cite unknown sources and cannot be confirmed, and which complicate the procurement process.”
Guo’s statement is likely in response to a Reuters report released Saturday, which cited three unidentified sources as saying Guo and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) had reached initial agreements to each buy 5 million doses of the BNT vaccine.
The report said that Guo and TSMC had reached agreement with a subsidiary of Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co., which has a contract with BNT to sell the COVID-19 vaccines in China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
The report cited Hon Hai as saying that it was continuing to “work hard” on the vaccine purchase plan, while TSMC said that it was still a work in progress and “no further information is available at this time”.
The Taiwanese government formally authorized Hon Hai and TSMC in late June to represent it in negotiations to purchase up to 10 million doses of the BNT COVID-19 vaccine, as the country struggles with a vaccine shortage.
According to Taiwan’s government, it was close to securing 5 million vaccines from BNT earlier this year, but the deal fell through due to interference from China.
Taiwan has signed contracts to purchase about 20 million vaccine doses from abroad, including 5.05 million doses of Moderna, 10 million doses of AstraZeneca, and 4.76 million of unspecified brands through the COVAX program.
Only about 1.5 million doses have been delivered to date, but Taiwan has also received donations of 2.5 million doses of Moderna from the United States and 1.24 million doses of AstraZeneca from Japan.
The government has also signed contracts to buy 10 million doses of vaccines from two Taiwanese manufacturers.
As of Saturday, around 2.2 million people in Taiwan, nearly 9.5 percent of its 23.5 million population, had received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine.
