The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday ordered that all hostess clubs and dance halls suspend operations, effective immediately, as it reported one new case of COVID-19 in the nation.
Preventing community transmission is an important part of the nation’s efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19, Deputy Minister of the Interior Chen Tsung-yen (陳宗彥), who is deputy head of the center, said at the center’s daily media briefing in Taipei.
The center also called for cooperation from the local governments of the nation’s 22 cities and counties, saying that it would need their assistance in enforcing the closures.
Photo: Huang Liang-chieh, Taipei Times
The center reported just one new case of COVID-19, while the number of deaths in Taiwan from the novel coronavirus remained at five.
The new case — the nation’s 380th — is a man in his 20s who is a roommate of the nation’s 322nd case, the center said.
He is asymptomatic and went into home isolation on Monday last week, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said, adding that the man was tested for the virus on Monday.
Health authorities have disinfected the university attended by the 322nd and 380th cases, including dormitories and public areas, said Chen, who heads the center.
The school has adopted distance learning until Friday next week, he added.
Local media reports identified the school as National Taiwan Normal University.
The university yesterday said in a statement that it on Wednesday received a notice from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of a second confirmed case of COVID-19 at the school.
Following notification of its first confirmed case late on Monday last week, the university said that it immediately took the necessary precautions and disinfected spaces that had been visited by the 322nd case.
The entire campus was disinfected over last week’s four-day Children’s Day and Tomb Sweeping Day long weekend, the university said, adding that the condition of the 322nd case has improved.
The 380th case is not enrolled in courses at other schools, nor are students from other schools enrolled in any of the classes he attended, it said.
The center has been provided with information about the students and teachers the two cases might have been in contact with on campus to cooperate with contact investigations, the university said, adding that it would continue to cooperate with the CDC and the Ministry of Education.
Under the education ministry’s guidelines, in-person classes at a university campus must be suspended for 14 days in the event of two or more confirmed cases of COVID-19.
As it had already begun school-wide distance learning on Monday, the suspension of on-campus classes is to end on Friday next week, the university said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS