Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) yesterday apologized for a dengue fever alert that was mistakenly sent to mobile phone users nationwide on Tuesday.
The alert was sent at about noon, warning residents of Tainan’s Kaishan Borough (開山) of an indigenous dengue fever outbreak in the area.
The message, signed by the Tainan City Government and the Centers for Disease Control, asked residents to take measures to prevent mosquito bites, routinely empty water containers and undergo an NS1 antigen test at a hospital should symptoms such as fever, headache, joint pain or rashes appear.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The alert was originally set up to be sent to residents within 300m of the borough, but the unit of distance was later changed to kilometers, Chen said during a visit to a summer camp for children in grades three to six organized by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬).
Government agencies have been asked to review the issue and debug the system, he said.
The students were invited to the Legislative Yuan, which is on break, to experience what it would be like to be a lawmaker for a day.
They asked Chen questions about dengue fever outbreak, whether the government would be placing restrictions on sugary drinks, how to reduce the smoking population by half, whether all school lunches have been inspected, the government’s long-term care initiative and other topics.
While government policies are closely related to children, adults seem to refuse to discuss them with children, believing that they would not understand, Lin said.
She organized the camp in the hopes of looking at national policies from a child’s perspective, she said.
The camp, which seeks to help students understand how legislative committees operate, promote civic education and deepen children’s understanding of democracy, is also a realization of children’s right to express their opinion as protected by the Convention on the Rights of the Children, she added.
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
RSS