U.S. Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) last week led a bipartisan contingent of 60 congressional lawmakers in requesting that the Biden administration prioritize the delivery of excess American COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan, which in recent weeks has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths.
Taiwan in April 2020 also sent a shipment of personal protective equipment (PPE) to the United States, which experienced a PPE shortage when COVID-19 began to spread stateside.
“Taiwan is a trusted U.S. partner on global health, trade and many other important areas,” Rep. Barr, who serves on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner newspaper. “At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan provided the U.S. with badly needed personal protective equipment.
“With that in mind, and as our Taiwanese friends see a surge in COVID-19 cases, I encourage the administration to include Taiwan in its upcoming vaccine distribution efforts,” said Rep. Barr in the statement, which was released by his staff.
In the letter Rep. Barr and the lawmakers sent to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, they noted that Taiwan is working to stem the spread of COVID-19 and avoid an economic lockdown.
“Such measures to slow the spread would not only impact Taiwan’s domestic economy but also have immense second order-effects on the United States’ own recovery by threatening Taiwan’s critical continued production of chips, semiconductors and other electronics products essential to America’s technology and auto industries,” according to their letter.
President Joe Biden announced on May 24 that his administration would ship 20 million doses of coronavirus vaccines abroad by the end of June.