The Department of Health (DOH) yesterday announced it would shut down Jen Chi Hospital (仁濟醫院) due to the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) there.
"The experts have reached an agreement this noon to shut down Jen Chi Hospital for at least 14 days. This is because now it is confirmed that out of the 17 reported cases in Jen Chi, there are three cases of PCR [poly chain reaction to coronavirus] positive," the DOH Deputy Director-General Lee Lung-teng (
"Following Hoping Hospital's quarantine policy, Jen Chi Hospital will have to separate SARS patients from non-SARS patients. All Jen Chi Hospital employees will be recalled and quarantined," Lee said.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Lee said the Taipei City Bureau of Health should now take over Jen Chi and examine quarantine details there.
All 17 reported SARS cases in Jen Chi Hospital are hospital employees, and two of them are being treated at other hospitals.
Lee also said it was now official policy for all medical personnel to wear facemasks when giving treatment to any patient.
If this regulation is violated, the violator's hospital could be fined or punished by the Communicable Disease Prevention Law (
Also, a SARS-patients transfer center has been set up so that if any SARS patient in Taipei needs to be transferred to another hospital, the case has to be examined and confirmed by the center first.
Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH), meanwhile, was said to have a cluster of SARS cases.
"The two SARS-like cases in TVGH are all medical personnel who tended SARS patients in the emergency department.
"The two cases didn't happen at the same time. This is not a cross-infection situation we are looking at here," Lee said.
Meanwhile, three more suspected SARS patients at Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital died.
One was a 65-year-old man, surnamed Lin, admitted to the hospital because of sepsis. He died of cardiac respiratory failure on Sunday night. The other was a 57-year-old cleaner, also surnamed Lin. He was a possible SARS case who passed away yesterday morning after emergency treatment failed. The other was a 42-year-old man.
Lee said that all SARS patients in Hoping Hospital would be relocated elsewhere by the end of this week, and Jen Chi Hospital would also have all its SARS patients transferred to other hospitals in the future.
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