Taiwan's representative in Britain yesterday demanded that a British health official explain her supposition that Taiwanese birds passed avian flu to a parrot that was in quarantine in Britain.
"Debby Reynolds saying before test results were out that the Taiwan birds carried H5N1 has not only seriously hurt Taiwan's international image but also exposed negligence in Britain's quarantine," Lin Hsin-yi (林俊義) said in an interview with the BBC, referring to the strain of the virus health authorities fear could cause a pandemic.
"We demand a report and an explanation from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [DEFRA] and at the same time express our gravest concern to the British government," he said.
Reynolds, the department's chief veterinarian, said on Friday that a parrot imported from Suriname had died of bird flu while in quarantine in Britain's first case of bird flu since 1992.
She confirmed on Monday night that the parrot died of the virulent H5N1 strain.
Lin said the parrot that died arrived in Britain from Suriname on Sept. 16 and was soon killed because it carried bird flu, but the Taiwanese birds that were alleged to have infected it arrived in Britain on Sept. 27.
"DEFRA must explain if the Suriname parrot -- or the Taiwan birds -- were infected first," Lin told the BBC. "It cannot assume that since most of the bird flu cases are in Asia, the Taiwan birds carried H5N1."
Lin also criticized the department for locking up birds from different countries together because bird flu can be transmitted bird-to-bird through the air.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
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