The Taipei City Government yesterday rejected a rumor that Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has contracted COVID-19.
Online rumors saying that Ko had contracted the virus and was in quarantine along with others who he had close contact with began spreading after the mayor canceled his attendance on Sunday afternoon at a news conference at the opening of an exhibition of veteran entertainer Betty Pai’s (白嘉莉) paintings.
Taipei City Government deputy spokeswoman Huang Ching-yin said that Ko had not been feeling well for two days, but he had not contracted COVID-19 and was not hospitalized.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Ko was at Taipei City Hall to conduct the morning administrative meeting at 7:30am as usual yesterday, she said, adding that he canceled his Sunday plans because he had diarrhea and suspected he had a norovirus.
Ko said that his detractors and Chinese trolls had posted misleading remarks and spread a rumor that he had COVID-19.
“I might fall down, but I will stand up again quickly, ” he wrote on Facebook.
Huang said that the city government has asked the Taipei Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division to investigate the rumors and that it would file lawsuits against people found to have started the rumors.
People should not to share online rumors, she said.
In other news, the city government said that a man who died on a street in Taipei on Sunday had not been quarantined.
Local Chinese-language media reported that a 48-year-old man surnamed Liu (劉), who had been exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 case, but lost contact with health authorities, was found unconscious at midday on Sunday and was dead on arrival at a hospital.
Taipei City Government deputy spokesman Tai Yu-wen (戴于文) said that Liu had been in the same New Taipei City hospital room as a confirmed COVID-19 case, but he did not come into close contact with the other patient and was assessed as having low risk of infection, so he was only listed as a “subject for health monitoring.”
The cause of Liu’s death is being investigated, Tai said.
Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said that Liu was in the hospital room with the COVID-19 patient on Feb. 6, but they did not stay in the same space for more than an hour.
If a forensic pathologist suggests that the body be tested for COVID-19, specimens would be sent to the Central Epidemic Command Center, Chuang 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
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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