Taiwan's wrestling for vaccine supplies is now looking rather desperate.
After the government failed to procure enough doses in a timely manner, Terry Gou, the founder of electronics manufacturer Foxconn, and a Buddhist association announced that they would procure the vaccine privately.
Remedy came from another side on Friday: Japan spontaneously sent 1.2 million cans of AstraZeneca to Taipei.
"I'm so grateful that I can hardly put it into words," wrote Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen in Japanese on Twitter.
Friederike Böge
Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.
Follow I follow
For them it is help in the greatest need.
Tsai has got into a difficult political situation in the past few days.
Rising numbers of corona infections caused the president to find it difficult to explain because so far only two percent of the population in Taiwan have received a first dose.
Local opposition politicians loudly demanded that Taiwan accept delivery offers from China.
However, Tsai does not want the Chinese government to achieve this triumph.
Germany also asked for help
Your government asked Japan, America, and Germany for help. Tokyo is planning further deliveries to Taiwan, according to a report by the Asahi Shimbun. In order to speed up the first batch on Friday, the cans were delivered directly instead of being made available via the international Covax initiative. China expressed its displeasure in advance: "We strictly reject Japan's interference in China's internal affairs," said a spokesman in Beijing, calling the vaccine delivery a "political show". Beijing regards Taiwan as part of its territory.
The calls from Taipei were also heard in Washington. The White House announced Thursday that Taiwan is one of 16 "countries and entities" to which the United States plans to ship seven million cans by the end of June. That should hardly be enough. So far, Taiwan, including supplies from Japan, has only two million cans available for 23 million residents.
There are three reasons for the hesitant procurement: First, there was no urgency for the vaccination campaign for a long time because the virus was under control on the island thanks to a strict border regime and quarantine rules. Since mid-April, however, the first large corona wave has been sweeping across Taiwan with several hundred new infections every day. Second, the government hoped to have its own vaccine manufacturers, but their preparations will probably not be ready before July. And thirdly, Taipei negotiated in vain for a long time with the Mainz-based company BioNTech.
Last week, President Tsai accused China of preventing a contract that appeared to have been signed in January. The background to this is that the Chinese company Fosun claims to have bought the exclusive marketing rights for China and Taiwan from BioNTech. The German government has now joined the debate. "Please be assured that ... Minister of Economic Affairs Altmaier went to great lengths in the ongoing talks and coordination between Taiwan and BioNTech," writes the head of the German representation, Thomas Prinz, on Facebook. However, the government in Berlin has no influence on a contract being signed. For his part, Altmaier had asked the government in Taipei to lobby the Taiwanese chip manufacturers for faster deliveries to German car manufacturers.
The offer by the Buddhist Association to import 500,000 cans of Johnson & Johnson seems to have meanwhile been shattered. The American company said it only negotiates with governments and multilateral organizations. Terry Gou, whose foundation wants to import five million cans of BioNTech from Germany, could feel the same way.