Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that the city government will form a special task force to oversee enforcement of home quarantines as part of its stepped-up efforts to contain the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
"As the fight against SARS has now entered the phase of community prevention, we must tighten enforcement of quarantine orders," Ma said at a news conference.
The special task force will be composed of officials from the Bureau of Health, police and the civil affairs and environmental protection departments, Ma said, adding that quarantine breakers will be punished in accordance with the law.
To avoid confusions, Ma said, the duration of home quarantine for both those who return from overseas SARS-affected areas and those who have come into close contact with suspected SARS carriers will be 14 days from now on.
Previously, those who returned from SARS-affected areas were subject to a 10-day home confinement.
Ma said a female janitor at Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital who died from SARS over the weekend will be enshrined at Yuanshan Martyr's shrine and her family will receive the highest level compensation. The treatment will be the same as that for Chen Ching-chiu (陳靜秋), a chief nurse at Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital who succumbed to SARS last Thursday, he added.
Noting that the battle against SARS is the medical equivalent of a war, Ma said all hospital staff, including doctors, nurses and other workers who sacrifice their lives in caring for SARS patients, deserve the highest level of respect and compensation.
During this critical moment in the campaign against SARS, Ma said, individuals who come down with fever should not take medicine on their own.
"They should pick up the phone and dial 119 for help. The emergency relief department will then send an ambulance to take them to officially designated hospitals for treatment to prevent any possible spread of the disease," he said.
Bureau of Health Director Chiu Shu-ti (邱淑媞) said two newly reported cases involved toddlers aged two and four.
"Both cases were related to the Hoping hospital. They are now in stable condition," Chiu said.
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:
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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