TAIPEI, Taiwan – On Friday, Terry Gou, the billionaire creator of Taiwan’s Foxconn, and TSMC secured preliminary deals to buy 5 million doses of BioNTech SE’s COVID-19 vaccine each, according to three persons familiar with the issue. Taiwan’s government has been trying for months to acquire the injections directly from BioNTech in Germany, blaming China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, for canceling a deal the two sides were supposed to complete earlier this year. The claims are false, according to China.
Faced with public pressure over the poor pace of Taiwan’s vaccination program, the government decided last month to enable Gou and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to negotiate for the vaccines on its behalf, which would be donated to the Taiwanese government for distribution.
According to the sources, Gou and TSMC made agreements with a subsidiary of Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd, which has a deal with BioNTech to market COVID-19 vaccines in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
According to one insider, the agreement is not final and will take some time to close.
As worldwide demand for vaccinations continues to overwhelm supply, it includes “relevant legal paperwork” needed to finalize the agreement but does not specify a delivery date, according to this person.
The vaccines will be transported directly from Germany to Taiwan, according to the source.
Any BioNTech vaccines should be “made at the original factory with the original packaging” and delivered directly to Taiwan, according to the Taiwanese government.
A request for comment from Fosun was not returned.
Foxconn, a major Apple Inc supplier, said it was still “working hard” on the immunization plan. It didn’t go into detail.
In a brief emailed comment, TSMC stated that the project was still in the works and that “no further information is available at this time.”
BioNTech did not respond to a request for comment.
Another source claimed that the German government, which has stated that it is attempting to assist Taiwan in obtaining BioNTech vaccines, was attempting to expedite the negotiations.
“The German government doesn’t want to give the idea that they didn’t supply vaccines to Taiwan because of Chinese pressure, so it’s been pressuring BioNTech to speed up its talks with Taiwan,” the person added.
The German Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite the fact that global supplies are limited, both sources claim that Fosun, as the vaccine’s exclusive supplier in China and Taiwan, is able to secure a higher priority for vaccine distribution.
Only about 9% of Taiwan’s 23.5 million people have gotten at least one dose of the two-dose COVID-19 vaccine regimen, a requirement made more pressing by a rise in domestic illnesses on the island, though the numbers remain tiny.
(Yimou Lee contributed reporting; Ben Blanchard and the Taipei newsroom contributed additional reporting; Kirsten Donovan and William Mallard edited)/n
