TAIPEI: Terry Gou, the billionaire creator of Taiwan’s Foxconn, and TSMC agreed to buy 5 million doses of BioNTech SE’s COVID-19 vaccine on Friday, 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 Taiwan’s delayed immunization program, the government decided last month to allow Gou and TSMC to negotiate for the vaccines on its behalf, which would be donated to Taiwan’s government for distribution.
According to the sources, the agreements were made with a subsidiary of Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd, which has a contract with BioNTech to market COVID-19 vaccines throughout China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
According to one of the individuals, Gou and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) established a “initial agreement” with the Chinese company to acquire 5 million vaccine doses each, but that it was not a definitive contract and that closing the sale would take time.
The agreement signed includes “associated legal paperwork” needed to complete the purchase, but it does not identify a possible delivery date, as worldwide demand for vaccinations continues to exceed supply.
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.
Outside of work hours, neither Foxconn, a major Apple Inc supplier, nor Fosun responded to calls for comment.
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.
According to a second source, the German government, which has stated that it is attempting to assist Taiwan in obtaining BioNTech vaccines, is attempting to speed up the talks.
“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 received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, a requirement made more urgent by a rise in domestic infections on the island, though the numbers remain tiny.
(Yimou Lee contributed reporting; Ben Blanchard and the Taipei newsroom contributed additional reporting; Kirsten Donovan edited the piece.)/n
