Taipei Chief Prosecutor Chen Ta-wei (
"With Center for Disease Control (CDC) officials' advice, we decided to do so because their quarantine period is completed," Chen said yesterday. "Their testimonies will be crucial in deciding whether the hospital should be blamed for the outbreak of SARS last month."
To investigate and decide who should take responsibility for the outbreak, Chen said prosecutors have interviewed more than 20 doctors, nurses, patients and officials in the past two weeks.
Those interviewed include Shin Kong Wu Ho-su Memorial Hospital Deputy Superintendent Huang Fang-yen (黃芳彥), former CDC director-general Chen Tzay-jinn (陳再晉), former Taipei City Bureau of Health director Yeh Chin-chuan (葉金川), current CDC Director-General Su Yi-jen (蘇益仁) and Hoping Hospital's Emergency Room Director Chang Yu-tai (張裕泰).
"Interviews with related personnel are completed. Now, we need to hear what [Wu and Lin] will say," Chen Ta-wei said.
According to Chen, former health director Yeh advised prosecutors to look up the patients' records because they would contain more useful information to help the prosecutors find out whether the Hoping Hospital had been honest and open in its reports to the Department of Health and Taipei's Bureau of Health
Prosecutors asked for access to the patients' files and CDC officials entered the Hoping Hospital on Tuesday to collect the records for March, April and May.
According to the prosecutors' office, prosecutors will expose these files to direct sunlight for more than 24 hours before handling them to make sure that the documents do not carry any SARS virus.
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT: A US Air Force KC-135 tanker came less than 1,000 feet of an EVA plane and was warned off by a Taipei air traffic controller, a report said A US aerial refueling aircraft came very close to an EVA Airways jet in the airspace over southern Taiwan, a military aviation news Web site said. A report published by Alert 5 on Tuesday said that automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast (ADS-B) data captured by planfinder.net on Wednesday last week showed a US Air Force KC-135 tanker “coming less than 1,000 feet [305m] vertically with EVA Air flight BR225 as both aircraft crossed path south of Taiwan” that morning. The report included an audio recording of a female controller from the Taipei air traffic control center telling the unidentified aircraft that it was
A series of discussions on the legacy of martial law and authoritarianism are to be held at the Taipei International Book Exhibition this month, featuring findings and analysis by the Transitional Justice Commission. The commission and publisher Book Republic organized the series, entitled “Escaping the Nation’s Labyrinth of Memory: What Authoritarian Symbols and Records Can Tell Us,” to help people navigate narratives through textual analysis and comparisons with other nations. The four-day series is to begin on Thursday next week with a discussion between commission Chairwoman Yang Tsui (楊翠), Polish-language translator Lin Wei-yun (林蔚昀), and Polish author and artist Pawel Gorecki comparing
MOVING OUT: A former professor said that rent and early education costs in Taipei are the nation’s highest, which makes it difficult for young people to start families The population of Taipei last year fell to the lowest in 23 years due to high rent, more transportation options and the expansion of northern cities into a single metropolis, academics and city officials said on Monday. Data released this month by the Ministry of the Interior showed that the capital was home to 2,602,418 people last year, down 42,623 from 2019. The decline is second only to 1993, when the population fell by 42,828 people, while Taipei’s population was the lowest it has been since 1997. Taipei saw the biggest drop among the six special municipalities, while Taoyuan led the group in
A legislator yesterday called for authorities to investigate the sale of Chinese-made, Internet-connected karaoke machines containing “propaganda songs.” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said she was approached by a person who had discovered Chinese patriotic songs such as My Motherland (我的祖國) — which is commonly referred to as China’s “second national anthem” — in Chinese-made karaoke devices sold in Taiwan. The machines are popular, as they can connect to the Internet, providing access to thousands of songs, she said. One retailer, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the machines first entered the local market about three years ago, starting with