TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) announced Thursday (May 14) that Taiwan's domestically developed vaccines should be available in July.

At a press conference held after a national security meeting on Thursday, Tsai announced the research and development of Taiwan's domestic vaccines have entered the final stages of their phase II trials. She stated that the "first wave" of domestic vaccines is expected to be available to the public by late July.

Tsai said the CECC has already begun devising plans for the rollout of the vaccines. She encouraged people to register in advance so that vaccinations can be carried out smoothly.

She stressed that, "The more people who are vaccinated, the greater the resistance of the people will be as a whole and the safer Taiwan will be."

The domestic vaccines of three companies have reached advanced clinical trials: Taichung City-based Adimmune Corp., Hsinchu County-based United Biomedical, and Hsinchu County-based Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp. Clinical trials for the three vaccines began last August, with Medigen and United Biomedical in now phase II and Adimmune in Phase I, with plans to focus on variants of the virus.

United Biomedical's vaccine is called "UB-612," Adimmune's has been named "AdimrSC-2f Vaccine," and Medigen's has been dubbed "MVC-COV1901 Vaccine." All three are categorized as protein subunit vaccines, as they inject proteins from the virus into the body to induce an immune response.

According to Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration, other Taiwan candidates in the works include a DNA vaccine by the National Health Research Institutes and Enimmune Corporation, a protein subunit vaccine with nano-vector by National Taiwan University and Tanvex BioPharma Inc., a self-amplifying mRNA vaccine by Abnova, and a protein subunit vaccine by PharmaEssentia.