Kinmen County Commissioner Lee Chu-feng (
Lee said he would relay the councilors' proposals to the central government for permission to close direct links between Kinmen and the Chinese cities of Xiamen and Fuzhou, for one month.
The council passed a resolution yesterday calling for the "small three links" -- which were opened in January 2001 -- to be suspended for 10 days in an attempt to stem the spread of SARS.
The links allow the passage of goods, people and mail between the Kinmen and Xiamen.
The councilors also passed a resolution asking the Kinmen County Government to assess the feasibility of imposing a 10-day county-wide quarantine, with all public and private sector activities temporarily suspended, to contain the spread of SARS.
Lee said that the county government decided after an emergency meeting that because of insufficient medical resources, Kinmen would have to implement more strict measures against the disease, including compulsory 10-day home quarantine for all people arriving from Taiwan.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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