Two Taiwanese who contracted COVID-19 while onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship were yesterday released from a Tokyo hospital after testing negative for the disease.
The man and woman were brought to the Self-Defense Forces Central Hospital on the evening of Feb. 15, the man said, adding that the two of them were released after two successive tests turned up negative.
The 85-year-old father of the male passenger, who was also aboard the Diamond Princess, is being treated in another hospital in the Kansai region after he coughed up blood while still in quarantine on the ship.
After being released from the hospital yesterday, the man said that he would travel by train to Kansai to wait there for his father to be released from the hospital.
He has spoken frequently with his father by telephone while they were both hospitalized, he added.
“The hospital has taken great care of my father. He’s in a room by himself and has a nurse assigned to him only,” the man said.
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan has also provided assistance and sent vitamins to the hospital for his father, he said.
His father was recovering well and has been taken off medication for his cough, but would need to undergo more tests before being discharged, he said.
Speaking about his own experience of being hospitalized in Tokyo, the man said that he was in a regular hospital ward and did not need to be in a negative-pressure isolation room.
The hospital staff were very friendly and left him an encouraging note at his bedside, he said, adding that the Taiwanese representative office sent him books and a notepad.
“The hospital was different from what I imagined after seeing the news and it was not easy being in quarantine — for example, breakfast often consisted of little more than toast and showers had to be scheduled,” he said. “It was a humbling experience.”
Friends sent him a network card to get online, as well as coffee and snacks, making the 11 days in quarantine more bearable, he said.
A total of five Taiwanese passengers from the cruise ship were hospitalized with infections and three remain in hospital, officials said.
A Hong Konger, a Canadian, a Briton and two Americans were also discharged after testing negative for the virus, officials said.
Although some details remain unclear, such as how the five Taiwanese are to be transported back to Taiwan and whether they would be placed under quarantine on their return — the man said that he would fully cooperate with whatever measures are necessary.
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
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS