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
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
One person was killed and another seven injured today when a tourist shuttle bus plunged 30m to 40m down a ravine in Nantou County, the Tourism Administration said. The bus is suspected to have suddenly accelerated out of control near the flower center of the Sun-Link-Sea Forest Recreation Area, a popular attraction during cherry blossom season. Of the eight onboard, a 66-year-old man was killed, four were seriously injured and three sustained minor injuries, including the driver. The Nantou County Police Department said it received a report of the incident at 12:15pm and dispatched seven teams to assist. All surviving passengers have been transferred
RSS