Taipei, June 16 (CNA) Taiwanese people most want the COVID-19 vaccines developed by American pharmaceutical company Moderna and the partnership of Pfizer and German-manufacturer BioNTech, according to a recent survey released Wednesday by the opposition Kuomintang (KMT).
In terms of the government's disease prevention policy, 65.1 percent of respondents thought the government should conduct universal screening for COVID-19 to stem further community transmission, the survey on the domestic COVID-19 situation and vaccines issues indicated.
On epidemic management and control measures, 50.1 percent of respondents believe that the government's measures are not in compliance with the standards of preemptive preparation; 49.9 percent expressed worries about Taiwan's domestic vaccines being unable to obtain international certification, the survey showed.
The survey revealed that Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson's are the top four brands of vaccines that Taiwanese most want to be vaccinated against COVID-19, while vaccine candidates developed by Taiwan's Medigen Vaccine Biologics and United Biomedical Inc. were at the bottom of the list.
Meanwhile, asked about the central government's failure to secure sufficient COVID-19 vaccine supply, 66 percent of respondents said that local governments or private enterprises should be allowed to help negotiate and procure vaccines from abroad, according to the poll.
While unveiling the results of the survey at a news conference, KMT Communications Committee chairwoman Wang Yu-min (王育敏) called on President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to procure more safe vaccines with high efficacy.
Huang Hsin-hua (黃心華), vice chairman of the KMT's think tank, the National Policy Foundation, suggested that the government use domestic vaccine candidates only as a backup to imported ones as they have either completed or are still in Phase 2 trials and have both not yet begun Phase 3 trials which are typically used to determine efficacy.
The KMT poll was conducted from June 7-9 among Taiwanese people aged 20 and above around the country and had 1,050 valid responses. It had a confidence level of 95 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.98 percentage points.
