HELPING HAND

White House Sends 2.5 Million COVID-19 Vaccines to Taiwan

The amount is triple what the White House promised.

The Joe Biden administration sent 2.5 million Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan Saturday, three times its initial promise of 750,000. The doses left the U.S. Saturday morning, State Department spokesman Ned Price tweeted, and they are set to arrive late Sunday. The move comes a week after President Biden pledged to take more action against China, which has long tried to rein in Taiwan as a part of the mainland. Taiwan had been wary of Chinese vaccines, though, and blamed it for failed plans to buy vaccine doses from BioNTech. That led it to continue talks with the U.S. for the delivery, Reuters reports. The island is currently facing an uptick in COVID-19 cases, prompting its urgency in getting its population vaccinated. “We are not allocating these doses, or delivering these doses, based on political or economic conditions,” a senior administration official told Reuters. “We are donating these vaccines with the singular objective of saving lives.”