The Taipei District Prosecutors' Office yesterday sent a top official to Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital to oversee strict quarantine measures placed on the building by the city government.
City Hall announced orders on Thursday to isolate all staff and patients at the hospital for 14 days to prevent the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
PHOTO: LIAO CHENG-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
However, its emergency quarantine plan was criticized by quarantined people and their families for treating those caught inside the hospital like prisoners.
"Chief Prosecutor Chen Ta-wei (陳大偉) is at the hospital," said Chen Hung-ta (陳宏達), spokesman for Taipei District Prosecutors' Office. "If there are any violators, Chen will arrest them and prosecute them under Article 192 of the Criminal Code immediately."
Chen made his remarks after hearing news from the hospital of nurses threatening police officers and reporters stationed outside.
The nurses claimed they had witnessed a doctor leaving the building on Friday night and said, "If he can go home, why can't we? You cannot jail us here. We will try to escape if you keep treating us like prisoners."
Another nurse quarantined at the hospital opened a window and told reporters, "I do not care whether I am fined or sentenced. To me, it is more important to stay healthy. I want to save myself so I will run away whenever I have a chance."
Chen said that punishing violators is the last thing law-enforcement officers will do if the situation gets out of hand. He urged the public to cooperate and follow quarantine orders whenever and wherever they are issued.
"If anybody, including patients, doctors and nurses, dares to violate quarantine rules, police officers, who have been authorized to enforce the order, will arrest them as criminals immediately," Chen said. "I hope this will never happen."
Chen also said that police were authorized to force visitors at certain locations, such as hospitals and airports, to undergo body-temperature checks. People unwilling to take the test will be arrested on a charge of interfering with public functions.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not