Global supply of computer chips in danger unless Taiwan gets vaccines

Having successfully sidestepped the first Covid wave, the Taiwanese government now faces a health emergency — only about 1% of its population is vaccinated so far — with the potential to disrupt the chip industry critical to an already-squeezed global supply

Medical personnel wearing protective gear, guide people at a rapid coronavirus testing center in Taipei, Taiwan. File Picture: AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying

Back in February, as the world was beating a path to Taiwan’s door for help to tackle a shortage of semiconductors, the health minister got into a scrap with China over Covid-19 vaccines.

Beijing, he suggested, had used political pressure to derail Taiwan’s plan to purchase five million doses directly from Germany’s BioNTech, rather than via a Chinese company which held the rights to develop and market the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine across China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.