Popular tourist spots and transportation hubs nationwide were disinfected yesterday to prevent a spike of COVID-19 cases following the Tomb Sweeping Day long weekend, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said.
Environmental protection departments in cities and counties dispatched special squads, made up of 731 employees, who disinfected 863 locations, including 205 transportation hubs and 250 business areas, the EPA said.
These included popular tourist spots that the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) had cited in its text messages on Saturday, when it reminded the public to avoid crowded places and keep a proper social distance, including Kenting (墾丁) and Hengchun Old Street (恆春老街) in Pingtung County, Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien County and Guanzihling (關子嶺) in Tainan, it said.
Photo copied by Chen Hsien-yi, Taipei Times
The EPA reminded business owners that they should be following its disinfection guidelines and clean their indoor areas at least once per day, or more if their businesses get a lot of foot traffic.
The guidelines state that items that are frequently touched, such as service counters, tables and chairs, elevator buttons, escalator handrails, shopping carts, doorknobs, water taps, toilet seats and flush handles, diaper-changing tables and floor surfaces, should get special attention.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, yesterday reminded the public to practice good personal hygiene and self-health monitoring following the long weekend.
The center said that it would be reviewing the crowds seen at some tourist spots over the holiday weekend to see if further crowd control measures should be imposed during the Workers’ Day long weekend from May 1 to May 3.
These could include designating more car-free zones to help widen the social distance space for pedestrians and limiting the number of guests that hotels could accept, it said.
Crowded areas were also on the mind of New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) yesterday.
At a meeting about New Taipei City’s COVID-19 prevention measures, Hou said seeing scenic areas packed with holidaymakers had saddened him, as “all the hard work during the disease prevention period would mean nothing as long as there are loopholes.”
Local governments must be fully prepared to roll out more preventive measures, including tourist number controls, crowd diversion, and restrictions on hotel bookings, to perhaps 70 or 80 percent of their original thresholds.
Effective today, anyone not wearing mask would be barred from entering New Taipei City government buildings, including officials, Hou said.
Additional reporting by Chien Hui-ju and Lee I-chia
Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao (李佳豪) on Sunday won a silver medal at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England, a career best. Lee, 25, took silver in the final of the men’s singles against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi (石宇奇) of China, who won 21-17, 21-19 in a tough match that lasted 51 minutes. After the match, the Taiwanese player, who ranks No. 22 in the world, said it felt unreal to be challenging an opponent of Shi’s caliber. “I had to be in peak form, and constantly switch my rhythm and tactics in order to score points effectively,” he said. Lee got
EMBRACING TAIWAN: US lawmakers have introduced an act aiming to replace the use of ‘Chinese Taipei’ with ‘Taiwan’ across all Washington’s federal agencies A group of US House of Representatives lawmakers has introduced legislation to replace the term “Chinese Taipei” with “Taiwan” across all federal agencies. US Representative Byron Donalds announced the introduction of the “America supports Taiwan act,” which would mandate federal agencies adopt “Taiwan” in place of “Chinese Taipei,” a news release on his page on the US House of Representatives’ Web site said. US representatives Mike Collins, Barry Moore and Tom Tiffany are cosponsors of the legislation, US political newspaper The Hill reported yesterday. “The legislation is a push to normalize the position of Taiwan as an autonomous country, although the official US
CHANGE OF TONE: G7 foreign ministers dropped past reassurances that there is no change in the position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including ‘one China’ policies G7 foreign ministers on Friday took a tough stance on China, stepping up their language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies. A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored last month’s Japan-US statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan. Compared with a G7 foreign ministers’ statement in November last year, the statement added members’ concerns over China’s nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and
‘CROWN JEWEL’: Washington ‘can delay and deter’ Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plans for Taiwan, but it is ‘a very delicate situation there,’ the secretary of state said US President Donald Trump is opposed to any change to Taiwan’s “status quo” by force or extortion and would maintain that policy, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Hugh Hewitt Show host on Wednesday. The US’ policy is to maintain Taiwan’s “status quo” and to oppose any changes in the situation by force or extortion, Rubio said. Hewitt asked Rubio about the significance of Trump earlier this month speaking with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) at the White House, a meeting that Hewitt described as a “big deal.” Asked whether the meeting was an indication of the
RSS