The Executive Yuan held an emergency meeting yesterday to review efforts made by the government's task force to cope with the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic and announced new mea-sures to tackle the health crisis.
"The Executive Yuan has already ordered all local governments to clearly declare SARS a statutory communicable disease," said Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) after the meeting, "and the government also ordered 711 hospital beds around the country to separate patients found to have the atypical form of pneumonia."
Under the new measures announced yesterday, all government officials and military personnel are barred from visiting China, Hong Kong and Vietnam and the authorities will be able to quarantine arriving airline passengers suspected of either having SARS or coming into contact with someone who is infected.
"From now on, if any airline passenger landing in Taiwan is found to have been infected with SARS, all passengers of the [same] flight will be quarantined for at least five days," Lin said.
He said the government will provide a guidebook explaining the health measures for foreigners arriving in Taiwan.
As for closing schools to prevent the disease from spreading, Lin said such decisions will be left up to local governments.
"The Executive Yuan has authorized local governments to make decision on whether to suspend classes for all K-12 schools," he said.
"Basically, if one student in a class is afflicted with the disease, all students in the class must stay home. If two students in a school are afflicted, then the [operations] of the whole school must be suspended," he said.
Lin said that the government has also sent four letters to the World Health Organization (WHO) to protest its listing of Taiwan as a province of China in its warnings about the SARS epidemic.
* All government officials and military personnel are barred from visiting China, Hong Kong and Vietnam.
* Airline passengers suspected of either having SARS or coming into contact with someone who is infected with it can be quarantined.
* If one student is infected, all students in the class must stay home. If two students in a school fall ill, then the entire school must suspend operations.
"We will provide official letters to 155 countries to explain how Taiwan is dealing with SARS," Lin said.
He stressed that financial and economic agencies must also properly explain the nation's countermeasures to foreign businesspeople in order to maintain their confidence in investing the country.
Meanwhile, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday blamed China for concealing the information of the SARS epidemic and he urged the international community to accept Taiwan as a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) in order to help figure out the way for epidemic prevention.
"Owing to the Chinese government deliberately concealing the development of SARS, now the health of people all over the world, including people in Taiwan, has been seriously impacted," Chen said as he received a Japanese politician at the Presidential Office.
"However, the WHO still refuses to admit that Taiwan is one member of the global community," Chen said.
"We hope that Taiwan can cooperate with all countries in the world to engage in the epidemic prevention efforts," he said.
The Department of Health also condemned Beijing for making Taiwan into a "SARS quarantine orphan" through its political interference. DOH Director-General Twu Shiing-jer (
"This neglect of the importance of human life itself is tantamount to a terrorist crime," Twu said.
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