Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) yesterday called for the policy regarding the purchase of masks at contracted pharmacies to be modified to give priority to people with a chronic disease.
Due to panic buying of surgical masks after the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak, the Central Epidemic Command Center on Thursday last week implemented a policy that requires people to produce their National Health Insurance card or Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) when buying masks at contracted pharmacies. Each person can purchase only two masks per week.
However, while civic groups have initiated an “I’m OK, you buy first” movement to encourage people to allow those who are more vulnerable than themselves to purchase masks first, many who need masks still say they have been unable to obtain a mask.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Hung said that he has received many complaints from people with chronic diseases who have to visit hospitals frequently, but have been unable to purchase masks.
He hopes the government will hear their voices, Hung said.
He said he would write to the relevant government departments, calling for the policy to be modified after domestic production of masks has increased to allow people to have priority if they can produce a certified document proving that they have a chronic disease.
He also urged the Executive Yuan to consider how to give priority to people with chronic diseases.
Hung acknowledged the efforts of frontline disease prevention workers, but said he hopes that policymakers will understand people’s needs and attend to them.
Hung urged people to take precautionary measures against the virus and be aware of the possibility of clustered infections among school children after school starts in two weeks.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching