Taiwan, once a covid success story, faces outbreak and vaccine shortage

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Tue, 2021-05-18 21:28 — mike kraft

Once a covid success story, Taiwan struggles with a vaccine shortage Residents rush to get vaccinated amid the island's worst outbreak, only to find there are nowhere near enough doses. Lily Kuo, Alicia Chen Washington Post

TAIPEI, Taiwan — For most of the past year, it was as though the pandemic didn't exist in Taiwan. Restaurants and bars remained crowded. Reservations were hard to come by. Large events including music festivals and marathons went ahead, while domestic tourism boomed. In April, as many as 4 million people crowded the streets in central Taiwan for a nine-day pilgrimage.

Life was so normal that when the government began offering the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to certain groups in late March, few saw the need to get inoculated. Worried the unused doses would go to waste, authorities opened access to the general public for a fee.

Now, Taiwan faces its worst outbreak of the pandemic, with more than 1,000 new local infections in 10 days. Residents, suddenly eager to be vaccinated, are being turned away as authorities ration a supply of about 300,000 vaccine doses for a population of 24 million.

For much of the past year, Taiwan has been held up as an example of how to contain the coronavirus without resorting to extreme measures. Strict border control and a public quick to wear masks and take precautions after the experience of the 2003 SARS epidemic have meant that Taiwan recorded a little more than 2,000 cases and 14 deaths.

Now, fortunes seem to have reversed. As other countries embark on mass vaccination drives, only about 1 percent of Taiwan’s population has been vaccinated. Critics and anxious residents say officials squandered an opportunity to get ahead of the pandemic....

“Everything was stable for such a long time. We didn’t take the opportunity to do things like speed up the rollout of vaccines or increase testing capacity,” Chiang said.

The current outbreak began in April, with one cluster of cases connected to the Novotel in Taoyuan, used as a quarantine center for aviation staff. In early May, three other clusters emerged in Taipei’s Wanhua district, connected to hostess bars and teahouses, as well as in New Taipei City and in Yilan County in northeastern Taiwan. Health officials said the three clusters share the same genetic sequences of the cases in Taoyuan, which suggests a chain of transmission. On Tuesday, officials reported 240 local cases and two new deaths...

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