Taiwanese in China’s Hubei Province are to be allowed to return to the nation on their own starting tomorrow, when the CPBL would be able to admit up to 1,000 spectators to baseball games, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads of the center, said that Taiwanese in China’s Hubei Province, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, would not be required to take chartered flights or quasi-chartered flights from designated airports to return home.
The Chinese government imposed an unprecedented lockdown of Wuhan and other cities in Hubei on Jan. 23, leaving more than 1,000 Taiwanese, as well as their Chinese spouses and children, stranded in the province.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The CECC in late February announced that the National Immigration Agency had marked the identification papers of the Taiwanese in Hubei, and that they would only be allowed to return on chartered flights.
Chen said the special markings would not be removed to allow immigration officers at airports to identify Taiwanese returning from Hubei, and that they would be required to stay at a centralized quarantine facility for 14 days before returning home.
Meanwhile, from tomorrow, up to 1,000 spectators would be able attend each CPBL game, he said.
Photo: Seanwen Yang, courtesy of the Yushan National Park Administrative Office
Deputy Minister of the Interior Chen Tsung-yen (陳宗彥), deputy head of the center, said that online reservations for lodges in national parks with mountains — including Yushan (玉山), Taroko (太魯閣) and Shei-Pa (雪霸) national parks — would be reopened today.
Chen announced that one new imported COVID-19 case (No. 439) was confirmed yesterday.
The case is a woman in her 30s, who had worked in the UK since January and returned to Taiwan on Apr. 26.
The woman reported that she had a stuffy nose and felt fatigued when she returned to Taiwan, so she received a COVID-19 test at the airport and was taken to a centralized quarantine facility, but was moved to a quarantine hotel the next day as the test came back negative, he said.
She continued to have a runny and stuffy nose, and developed an abnormal sense of taste during her stay at the hotel, so she was tested again on Monday and the result came back positive, Chen said.
CECC advisory specialist panel convener Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳) said that the woman thought she might have been experiencing menstrual fatigue on her trip back to Taiwan, so the center could not pinpoint when her COVID-19 symptoms began.
Applications for the Executive Yuan’s extended COVID-19 relief program — a one-time payment of NT$10,000 to workers not covered by social insurance programs — opened yesterday.
The center is grateful to officials at local district offices for handling the extra work, Chen said.
Those eligible are urged to not all apply on the first few days, as it would cause the offices to be overcrowded, he added.
The applications would be reviewed generously, promptly and in a way that is convenient to applicants, he said, adding that if people cannot provide documents to prove their eligibility, their application would most likely be accepted if they sign an affidavit.
About 99 percent of people who are not covered by any social insurance program and have very little savings should be trusted as long as they sign the affidavit, Chen said, adding that they would need to write a brief description of how their jobs have been affected by the pandemic.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying