President Tsai Ing-wen has been in the news over the past week due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As of Thursday, there had been 19 more deaths from COVID-19 in Taiwan, bringing the death toll since the beginning of the pandemic up to 497.  To prevent COVID-19 from spreading further, the government has extended its Level 3 COVID-19 Alert to June 28.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, President Tsai said holding the virus at bay is a top priority.  Tsai also said vaccine purchases are a complicated process, as they “involve multilateral international negotiations and political wrangling.” Tsai also said it’s not true that the government has been trying to block the private sector from purchasing vaccines from abroad.