On January 12, 2010, the 40th meeting held by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) was convened by the commander-in-chief of CECC, the Vice Premier of the Executive Yuan, Li-Luan Chu.Besides the H1N1 vaccination campaign, commander-in-chief Chu instructed continued implementation of other disease prevention measures such as provision of relevant medical care services and appropriation of television channels to provide the public with the correct information about disease prevention.

CECC announced that the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC) asked Gallup Market Research Corp. to conduct an H1N1 awareness survey during January 5 and January 6, 2010 and an H1N1 vaccination survey for people aged 18 and above during January 7 and January 9, 2010.About 40% of people in Taiwan expressed that they have decided against vaccination because of recent reports concerning vaccine adverse events and.Further, the recent reports have also hurt people’s confidence in the decisions made by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) committee.Only about 20% of the population has confidence in the VICP committee.In addition, close to 20% of the survey participants experienced side effects after receiving the H1N1 vaccine, which corresponds with the H1N1 vaccine human trial results.Overall, the survey participants rated their level of satisfaction and level of confidence with the government’s H1N1 control work 81% and 76% respectively.However, their level of satisfaction with the way the government has handled the vaccine adverse events is comparatively lower, 57%.In light of the survey results, CECC has planned to thoroughly review the way the vaccine adverse events have been handled and will further enhance health education and health promotion in order to provide the public with the correction information about the H1N1 vaccine.

As of 10am on January 12, 2009, a total of 5,502,410 vaccines have been administered.The H1N1 vaccination coverage rate is the highest among students from first through third grade who have received the first of the two H1N1 vaccine doses (86.1%), followed by healthcare personnel (82%) and students from fourth through sixth grade (76.6%).On the other hand, the H1N1 vaccination coverage rate is the lowest among people aged between 19 and 24 (3.6%) and children aged below 10 years have not received the second of the two H1N1 vaccine doses (10.9~39.5%).CECC once again urged the public to get vaccinated against H1N1 as soon as possible.