Two major international orchid shows scheduled to take place in Taichung and Tainan next month have been postponed due to concern over the spread of COVID-19.
Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) said in a statement that he decided to postpone the Taiwan International Orchid Show, which was scheduled to take place from Saturday next week to March 16, after consulting with the Taiwan Orchid Growers Association and in consideration of public health.
The annual show, which is held at the Taiwan Orchid Plantation in the city’s Houbi District (後壁), attracted more than 210,000 visitors last year, creating NT$11.3 billion (US$372.6 million) in export opportunities, Huang said.
Huang added that he hoped the show could be rescheduled for the second half of the year.
In Taichung, Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) said that the triennial World Orchid Conference, which was scheduled to be held from March 9 to 18, would be postponed “to a later time in 2020 after COVID-19 has subsided.”
Taiwan Orchid Growers Association secretary-general Tseng Chun-pi (曾俊弼) said that the impact of the postponement on the industry was difficult to calculate, while Tainan Agriculture Bureau Director Hsieh Yao-ching (謝耀清) said the city would work to adjust its contracts with the association and assist the group in seeking compensation from the Council of Agriculture.
In other news, Taipei 101 and Pacific Sogo Department Stores yesterday began taking the temperatures of shoppers, denying entry to those with readings of 37.5oC or higher.
Other measures have also been taken to combat the spread of disease, including improving the ventilation system to keep the building’s air clean and more intensively disinfecting elevators, escalators and restrooms in the shopping mall, Taipei 101 said.
Sogo said that its elevators, escalators and restrooms are disinfected every two hours, and customer service counters, VIP rooms and children playgrounds are disinfected every hour, with their frequency being increased during holidays.
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