With Taiwan's first new SARS case of the winter now being quarantined and treated in Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital (和平醫院), Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday declared that SARS prevention and control measures were being enforced in full.
When informed that a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel who works at the medical research center at National Defense University tested positive for the SARS virus, the Taipei City Government yesterday immediately convened an emergency conference to announce prevention and control measures.
The city's Bureau of Health Director Chang Hang (
People who go to hospitals are required to wear face masks, Chang said. While the general public does not have to wear masks, people with coughs or fevers must wear masks, Chang said.
"We ask hospital patients' relatives and friends to decrease the frequency of their visits to the sick, to prevent the possibility of an outbreak in hospitals," Chang said.
Chang said the first new local SARS case in Taiwan had landed Taipei on the so-called orange-light warning as regulated by the city government, or the level B alert as regulated by the central government.
Both the city and the central government were in step in handling the SARS control measures, Chang said.
"All the prevention and control measures will resume functioning according to the standard procedures we implemented this May," Chang said.
"And the city will dispatch examiners to inspect the taking of temperatures and the public mask wearing and report the numbers of people running a fever every week."
"If people have a fever of over 37?C, they can call 177 for consultation. And if they want to go to a hospital they can call 119 to dispatch an ambulance to take them to hospital," Chang said.
He said that all the measures will be in place until Dec. 31, if no further SARS cases were reported.
The Bureau Director of Civil Affairs Samuel Wu (
The city government has also disinfected the neighborhood, Wu said.
Ma, who demanded that all bureau directors carry out disease prevention monitoring measures to the letter of the law, emphasized that this SARS patient was an individual case and citizens have no cause for alarm.
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