An entire company at an army unit in Tainan was quarantined yesterday after one of its soldiers displayed symptoms of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, the army said.
Initial medical checks did not reveal whether the soldier has the virus, however, in a precautionary measure all unit personnel, some 100 service members, will be isolated for 10 days.
It took the number of service members quarantined because of SARS to above 120.
On Friday, army officials said that 23 soldiers had been quarantined after having contact with a soldier whose girlfriend is a nurse at Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital, which was isolated af-ter staff members developed symptoms of SARS.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of National Defense yesterday offered the use of another two military sites to house civilians with suspected SARS -- the Sungshan Military Hospital in Taipei, formerly called the Air Force General Hospital, and a newly built army base in Taoyuan.
Ministry spokesman Major General Huang Sui-sheng (
"So far, there have been no confirmed cases of SARS infections in the military. We are now taking all sorts of preventive measures in cooperation with medical authorities," Huang said.
"A task force activated for the occasion is behind the efforts. It has incorporated resources from different branches of the military ranging from medical, public relations, combat operations and logistics," he said.
"The biological-warfare laboratory of the preventive-medicine center has also been working in the fight against SARS. It is responsible for assisting medical authorities in the determination of SARS infections," he said.
A defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said although there has been no cases of SARS infections in the armed services so far, military leaders are very concerned about a case developing. Commanding officers at all levels have canceled holiday plans to be ready for action.
"The military has been immune so far to SARS infections possibly because most of the bases are isolated from the public and seldom have visitors from outside, let alone those from foreign countries," the official said.
"A lot of open space might be another contributing factor. Although most of the soldiers do not have large living spaces to themselves, they do have very large open spaces outside their living quarters," he said.
"Most of the military bases do not use air conditioners or central air-conditioning systems. We keep the air inside a building fresh by keeping the windows open," he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods