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
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS