Bad quarantine conditions
My name is James Shone and I have been placed in government quarantine. The government’s reasoning for this is because I traveled to Taiwan from South Africa, which has been declared a “hot spot” for COVID-19.
While quarantining is an important process, the government appears clearly unprepared. Their resources are stretched, and they are unable to meet basic requirements.
Along with about 40 others, I arrived in Taiwan on flight EK366 at 9:30pm on Friday last week and have been taken to a military base in Chiayi County.
This place is not suitable for us. It is so cold here — something we discovered when the staff made us line up outside at 2am so they could search our bags. Some of us were still in T-shirts.
I am confined to my bed because it is too cold to walk on the tiled floor. The food that is left outside our rooms for us is cold by the time we get it. I know from experience how poisonous food like that can be, and so I have eaten almost nothing today.
If this keeps going, I will have starved to death by the time they declare us clear of the virus.
They have not even provided me with a towel, so I have not been able to clean myself since I boarded my first flight on Wednesday afternoon last week. This neglect borders on criminal, as does the uncaring nature of the staff here.
Those of us with places to stay must be allowed to self-quarantine. It will take the strain off government resources and allow us to monitor ourselves in a setting that is familiar and comfortable. Putting people in these military bases is not the way.
Please spread awareness and get us out of here.
James Shone
Understaffed hospitals
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep across the world, and Taiwan is facing yet another case of in-hospital infection, after a similar outbreak in February last year.
The recent outbreak has seen two doctors and three nurses confirmed with infections, and the authorities are still trying to identify medical professionals with whom they have come in contact. The number of infections is likely to increase.
Unlike with other professions, medical staff cannot simply be put into isolation once they have been identified as contacts of infected persons, in part due to the problem of hospital staff shortages and shortfalls in medical staffing agencies.
Risk management in the workplace demands that hospitals can continue to operate at the same level if any member of staff takes time off. However, due to the long-term trend of downsizing staff to maintain high profits, staffing levels have been allowed to fall, with no adequate substitute mechanism in place to make up for the shortfall.
Even if a medical professional feels under the weather, taking time off is simply not an option. It has come to the point that if one falls ill, the whole team will be affected and not be able to operate normally, and many people have become used to this situation.
The problematic working conditions exacerbate the problem of infections within the hospital. In the past, this would have affected medical professionals and their patients.
The pandemic has amplified the problem. If the scale of the problem of hospital staff shortages, and the excessive hours doctors and nurses are expected to work, is not given serious consideration at this time, when will it be?
Yan Pa
Taipei
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