Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said she is the director of the city government’s COVID-19 prevention response team, so she has the best overall grasp of the virus situation in Taipei, and that Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has not been informed of all the details.
Huang was responding to a series remarks Ko and Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), had made on whether more details about a confirmed COVID-19 case should be publicized.
The CECC is still investigating who has been in contact with the nation’s 24th confirmed case — a woman in her 60s in northern Taiwan, who has not traveled overseas in the past two years — and her daughter and granddaughter, who were also confirmed to have COVID-19.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Ko has repeatedly called for the area in which the woman lives to be revealed to the public to prevent further panic.
However, Chen said that local governments have been informed of all cases, and revealing the details of cases might cause stigmatization and trigger more panic.
Ko on Saturday said that he had not been informed of the details.
“I am the only person who knows,” Huang said yesterday, adding that she reports to Ko about the city’s epidemic situation, but does not necessarily share all the details with him.
Whether the nation’s 24th case is locally transmitted or not, the city government would enhance disease prevention and control measures to prepare for possible local transmission of COVID-19 in Taiwan, she said.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS