Yesterday marked the 30th day with no new local cases of COVID-19 infection in Taiwan, while 372 people have been removed from isolation after recovering, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said.
“Our local communities are generally safe, as no domestic cases have been reported in 30 days,” Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said at a daily news conference in Taipei.
However, people should continue to follow personal protective measures, including wearing a mask, practicing social distancing, observing cough etiquette, washing their hands frequently and staying at home if they feel ill, Chen said.
Photo courtesy of the Central Epidemic Command Center
Clear dividers were for the first time placed on the desk where CECC officials sit during the daily news conference, allowing them to take off their masks, prompting Chen to joke that he has not shown his face in public for a long time.
The dividers were placed to demonstrate to the public how effective disease prevention measures can be implemented indoors when social distancing is difficult to maintain, he said.
As yesterday was International Nurses’ Day, Chen, speaking on behalf of the CECC, thanked all nurses who have worked hard and long hours to keep Taiwan safe.
The ministry has launched a Web site to gather letters of support for nurses and had received more than 17,000 letters from more than 50 countries as of yesterday, Ministry of Health and Welfare Department of Nursing and Healthcare Director-General Tsai Shu-feng (蔡淑鳳) said.
More than 559,000 people have donated their share of masks for a total of more than 4.39 million masks to help medical practitioners in other countries who are fighting COVID-19, showing that “Taiwan can help,” Tsai said.
Asked about a hypochlorous acid solution produced by the Want Want Group (旺旺集團), which was fined for false advertising, Chen said that products that do not have a medical license from the Food and Drug Administration cannot be promoted as anti-bacterial.
Asked by a Hong Kong media outlet when Taiwan would relax border controls and allow travelers from Hong Kong or Macau to visit the country, Chen said he is optimistic about the disease situation being brought under control in the two territories.
However, the center is considering reopening only economic activities and trade with Hong Kong first, while other exchanges would have to wait a little longer, he said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS