People who have traveled to any of the 30 countries and territories listed by the government as having Zika virus outbreaks are not eligible to donate blood until 28 days after they have left an affected area, the Taiwan Blood Services Foundation said, with the measure going into effect yesterday.
The Centers for Disease Control on Wednesday issued a travel alert for 30 countries and territories, mostly in Central and South America and the Caribbean, the second-highest advisory in its three-tier system.
The 26 countries and territories in the Americas include Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, and the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean.
Other countries in the Americas included in the list are Brazil, Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela.
The remaining four areas on the list are Cape Verde in western Africa and American Samoa, Samoa and Tonga in the Pacific.
Foundation director Lin Min-chang (林敏昌) said many countries and areas have a similar observation period, such as 21 days in Canada and 28 days in Hong Kong.
Since 19 out of the 30 countries and territories are also listed as malaria-affected, with travelers to those areas barred from blood donations for a full year, and because there are fewer Taiwanese traveling to Central and South America, the measure will probably not have a significant effect on the blood bank, Lin said.
However, as the blood bank only has a six-day supply for transfusions, Lin said he hoped that more people would donate blood.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods