From today, all Chinese nationals are banned from entering Taiwan, while people who have traveled to China, Hong Kong or Macau in the previous 14 days are to be put under mandatory home quarantine for 14 days after returning to Taiwan, the Central Epidemic Command Center announced yesterday.
The only exception would be people who travel to Hong Kong or Macau after obtaining the government’s permission, who would be “asked to perform mandatory self-care management after returning to Taiwan,” said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who also heads the center.
The center designated China as a secondary epidemic area for the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, while the Mainland Affairs Council issued a “red” travel advisory — its highest level, meaning “do not visit” — for China and a “yellow” travel advisory — meaning “reconsider visiting” — for Hong Kong and Macau.
Photo: Chan Shih-hung, Taipei Times
Taiwan had no new confirmed 2019-nCoV infections yesterday, Chen said, but added that two Taiwanese evacuees from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the outbreak, showed mild respiratory symptoms and were quarantined at a hospital for further examination.
“However, confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV in China continue to increase rapidly and many areas in China have imposed travel bans or restrictions,” he said. “The whole of China has become an epidemic area.”
Mainland Affiars Council Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) said that Taiwanese who travel to China despite the agency’s travel warning would be quarantined at home for 14 days when they return.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The council in a news release said that 19 of China’s 31 provinces and cities had reported more than 100 confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV, including clustered infections in local communities in Beijing and Shanghai.
Confirmed cases in Hong Kong and Macau have also continued to increase in the past few days, the council said, urging people to remain cautious and reconsider traveling to the two territories.
Minister of the Interior Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said that people placed under mandatory home quarantine should practice self-discipline and observe the restrictions, adding that those whose breach quarantine would be dealt with according to the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法), the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法) and the Criminal Code.
“Local civil administrations, including borough and village wardens, are to cooperate with local health departments by finding people who lose contact with officials during quarantine,” he said. “If such people cannot be found, the police would step in to conduct a search.”
“Police will implement measures employed when solving major criminal cases when searching for such people,” Hsu said.
People with a fever who take antipyretics to reduce their body temperature or provide false information in the Novel Coronavirus Health Declaration Card upon their arrival in Taiwan would also face fines or other punishment for contravening the Social Order Maintenance Act and the Criminal Code, he said.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B