The Straits Exchange Foundation yesterday announced a third set of flights to evacuate 440 Taiwanese from China’s Hubei Province due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The flights, operated by China Airlines Ltd (中華航空) according to its normal schedule, are on Sunday and Monday next week.
They are to depart Shanghai Pudong International Airport at 7:50pm and arrive at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 9:50pm, the foundation said.
Photo: CNA
China Airlines is to dispatch two Boeing 777.
The aircraft has a capacity of 358 passengers, but each would only carry 220 to ensure a proper distance is maintained between those onboard, it said.
Within hours of the foundation starting to accept requests to book seats on the two flights, they had been overbooked, Deputy Minister of the Interior Chen Tsung-yen (陳宗彥) said.
As in the two previous rounds of evacuations — which used charter flights — all passengers would be required to wear a mask and protective clothing, he said.
Prior to boarding, passengers would have their temperature checked by medical personnel, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) told a news conference at the Executive Yuan in Taipei.
After arriving in Taiwan, they would be sent to a designated quarantine facility for 14 days and tested for COVID-19 within 48 hours, he said.
As there are at least 1,000 Taiwanese stranded in Hubei, the Ministry of the Interior would decide whether to employ more regular flights to repatriate them after reviewing the efficacy of the model, Chen said.
Taiwanese who have been in Hubei since the pandemic started would not be allowed to book flights home on their own, he said.
Asked whether the Chinese spouses and children of Taiwanese would be excluded from the flights as they were in the previous evacuations, Chen said that had not yet been decided.
Chen said that with the exception of Wuhan, the lockdown of Hubei Province has been lifted, but he did not give any recommendations on how people in the province should travel to Shanghai to take the flights.
The upcoming flights are the result of intensive discussions, presided over by Vice Premier Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), on Tuesday and Wednesday between officials from the foundation, the CDC, the Mainland Affairs Council, the National Security Council and the Civil Aeronautics Administration, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said.
Asked whether Taiwan would send direct flights to Wuhan, the original epicenter of the outbreak, to evacuate Taiwanese, Kolas said that the government would determine which model would best accomplish its overarching goal of meeting the high disease-prevention standards of the “Taiwan model,” as well as which method is most efficient.
The foundation and the Mainland Affairs Council would continue negotiating with Chinese authorities over any future flights, she added.
Additional reporting by Chung Li-hua
PRIORITY GROUPS: A line of people were waiting at the Good Liver Clinic, apparently to get shots, while the CECC announced more priority groups for jabs The Taipei-based Good Liver Clinic is to be fined NT$2 million (US$72,028) after giving free COVID-19 vaccine shots to people not in groups eligible to receive them, Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) said yesterday. The Zhongshan District (中山)-based clinic was removed from the city’s list of vaccination venues and health officials would be investigated for giving 1,113 doses to the clinic, Huang told an afternoon news conference at Taipei City Hall. The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) on Tuesday in an exclusive story citing an anonymous tip reported that a Taipei clinic was doling out unused vaccines. People in
PHASE 2: The firm’s CEO said that the results were good and the experimental vaccine safe, but added that hoped-for phase 3 trials would be expensive Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp (高端疫苗) yesterday reported positive results from an interim analysis of phase 2 trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, saying that the vaccine demonstrated high seroconversion rates and geometric mean titer (GMT) figures. A seroconversion rate is the percentage of participants in a trial displaying virus-specific immune memory after being given a vaccine, while the GMT measures the level of neutralizing antibody response, Medigen said. The experimental vaccine has a seroconversion rate of 99.8 percent and its GMT was 662 among the participants aged 20 to 89, while the gauges rose to 99.9 percent and 733 respectively in participants aged
NUMBERS HAVE FALLEN: Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said there are good signs, but ‘we cannot afford to let our guard down now’ The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported 219 new locally transmitted COVID-19 infections and 22 deaths. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that the 219 local infections — 117 male and 102 female — were aged from under five to over 100 years old, and they began having symptoms between May 22 and Monday. New Taipei City reported 123 cases, followed by Taipei with 54, Miaoli County with 16, Taoyuan with 13, Keelung with eight, Changhua County with two, and one each in Hsinchu City, Taichung and Tainan. The 22 deaths were 15 men and
ROLLING OUT DOSES: The expansion aims to speed up Taiwan’s vaccination drive by making more Moderna jabs available to workers at hospitals, the CECC said The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday expanded the eligibility for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to all healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers in the highest vaccine priority group. The center said that 75,000 doses of the vaccine — half of the first batch Taiwan has received — were on Wednesday distributed to hospitals across the nation with specialized COVID-19 rooms, negative pressure wards and testing services. Thus far, they had only been offered to frontline healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers at the designated hospitals, it said. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that the eligibility was
RSS