The health Minster of Taiwan, Chen Shih-chung, said on 26 February 2021 that Taiwan could begin administering its home-made COVID-19 vaccines as early as July 2021, Reuters news agency reported on Friday.

Chen was quoted as telling the parliament that human trials had begun for two COVID-19 vaccines separately developed by Taiwan-based Medigen Vaccine Biologics and United Biomedical Inc Asia.

"If everything goes well, we could start administering domestically-made vaccines in July," Chen said, without elaborating.

Taiwan, which has kept the pandemic well under control with less than 40 active cases, has not yet received any vaccines from abroad to begin its immunisation campaign.

It had agreed to buy almost 20 million vaccine doses, including 10 million from AstraZeneca and 4.76 million doses from the COVAX global vaccine programme.

Reportedly, Taiwan is also getting five million doses from US pharmaceutical company Moderna Inc and the government is working to grant it emergency-use approval.