An embassy building in Tianmu has been completely sterilized after a person working in the building tested positive for the A(H1N1) virus on Wednesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.
The ministry rebutted criticism by a Taipei City councilor that it had jeopardized the health of the people working in the building by delaying notification of the case. The building houses 17 embassies of Taiwan’s allies as well as the International Cooperation Development Fund (ICDF), a government-run humanitarian outreach agency.
Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said the ministry neglected to notify the embassies after an ICDF staff member tested positive for the swine flu virus and that the ministry should be held solely responsible if the virus spreads.
ICDF general-secretary Chen Lien-gene (陳連軍) said the staff member was one of a team of four that recently returned from a 17-day business trip to Latin America, stopping over in the US. She returned to work on Monday morning but took the afternoon off when she fell sick.
On Tuesday she visited hospital after developing a fever and the next morning she was notified that she had tested positive for the swine flu virus.
The staff member is in an isolation unit at Heping Hospital. So far, she is the only person among the four to test positive for the virus and it is uncertain where she contracted the flu, Chen said.
MOFA Deputy Spokesman James Chang (章計平) said that the entire building had been sterilized after the case was confirmed and that the ministry followed all the precautions laid out by the Department of Health (DOH).
Chang said the woman told her superiors about her diagnosis on Wednesday morning at around 9am and the ICDF immediately notified the DOH.
At around 1pm, the building’s management company contacted MOFA about the case and the Department of Protocols subsequently alerted the embassies at around 5pm on the same day, first via fax message and then in a follow-up telephone call.
When asked by the Taipei Times why it took MOFA almost four hours to notify the embassies and why the ICDF did not directly contact the embassies since they are in the same building, Chang said the Department of Protocols had the list containing the contact information for all of the embassies in the building and that MOFA wanted to gather all the relevant information before alerting the embassies to avoid any unnecessary panic.
All employees working on the same floor as the infected woman are required to wear face masks and have their temperature taken twice daily, Chen said.
A ranking ICDF official, who asked not to be identified, said the councilor’s criticism was unfounded.
“In the last 50 years of Taiwan’s international humanitarian work, more than 38 staff have lost their lives doing their job. Why doesn’t the councilor talk about the selfless sacrifice of these people?” he said.
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