The SuperStar Aquarius cruise ship yesterday returned to the Port of Keelung after the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) on Saturday confirmed that its passengers and crew members were not infected with the 2019 novel coronavirus.
The international cruise ship had docked at the port on Saturday, when disease control officers boarded the ship to conduct inspections.
None of the ship’s 1,738 passengers and 776 crew members were found to have contracted the virus, which has so far killed more than 800 people in China, CDC officials said.
Photo courtesy of JPwalker
All passengers were allowed to disembark after the inspection, which lasted almost nine hours, while the crew members were asked to remain on board. The ship was on Sunday asked to temporarily leave the port according to government regulations.
The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) then convened a meeting to discuss if and how the ship should be allowed to return to port, said One for All Public Relations Consultants, which represents the cruise line in Taiwan.
It was decided that the cruise ship should dock in a “non-operative mode,” meaning that its operator must not allow Taiwanese passengers to embark during the port stay, the company said.
However, the operator is allowed to replenish supplies and alternate crew members, it added.
“We have been paying close attention to the latest developments on the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak and are doing everything we can to comply with the government’s disease-prevention policy and inspection measures to block further spread of the disease. We would also regularly disinfect the ship, take the temperatures of our crew members and ensure that they wear masks,” the company said.
Taiwan International Ports Corp executive vice president Wang Pai-feng (王派峰) said that the ship is docked at the No. 4 pier on the west side of the port.
The SuperStar Aquarius has been using Keelung as its home port, which is why nearly all of the passengers on board were Taiwanese, Wang said.
However, the crew members come from nearly two dozen nations, including the Philippines, China, Nepal, Indonesia and India, he said.
All Chinese crew members, as well as those who have traveled to China, Hong Kong or Macau over the past two weeks, are banned from disembarking, according to CECC policy.
The port company would make sure that the alternation of the ship’s crew would be carried out in accordance with the center’s instructions, Wang said.
If there is no further instruction from the center on the matter, it would follow standard customs inspection, quarantine and security procedures, he said.
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