Taipei and Taoyuan yesterday reported that individuals who were under orders to self-regulate their viral status attended New Year’s Eve events, although they were all approached and persuaded to leave, with their detection facilitated by a digital system that detects signals from mobile devices.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) said that medical personnel at New Year’s Eve events had asked the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) to send word to the Taipei City Government should anyone listed as being under self-health management be reported within a 650m radius of city-run events.
The Taipei Police Department sent text messages to such people, informing them that those under self-health management were not allowed to attend, Huang said.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Those who were still in the area 10 minutes after the message were followed up with a phone call from the city government, she said.
About 30 such people were reported at events on Thursday night and left within 20 minutes of receiving the text message or phone call, Huang said.
The city government is looking into the whereabouts of the people involved, she said, adding that most people had remained in the hotel or residence registered as their location for the period of self-health management.
Photo: RITCHIE B. TONGO, EPA-EFE
The Taipei Tourism Bureau estimated that only 38,000 people attended the city’s New Year’s Eve event, a record low.
In Taoyuan at the Mayday New Year’s Eve concert, CECC standards — including requiring attendees to show identification — helped police extract five people at the event who had been ordered into self-health management, Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) said.
The municipality would fine them for breaches of the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法), Cheng said.
The five were wearing masks and told officers that they were unfamiliar with pandemic prevention regulations, he said, adding that officers escorted them to their residence or other accommodation.
While the people found to have contravened the law would certainly be fined, the amount has yet to be determined, the Taoyuan Department of Health said.
Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), the CECC’s spokesman, said that the cities’ New Year’s Eve events were the first events at which the CECC had tracked mobile phone numbers via its Digital Fence System 2.0 to identify people ordered into self-health management.
The system monitors the signal from a phone that has a number registered to a person under self-health management, allowing personnel at the events to detect when such people are within a certain distance of the site, Chuang said.
The system only targets people who are under self-health management and does not keep track of everybody, he said.
The third edition of the system, which began development in June, is a handset-based tracking system that allows the CECC to identify and locate individuals under quarantine, isolation or self-health management via triangulation.
When asked why such people were not stopped before they entered the events, Chuang said that the system was being used for the first time on Thursday and the CECC was still calibrating it.
People should follow the law and those who breach the rules face fines of NT$10,000 to NT$150,000, while people who break quarantine rules could be fined NT$60,000 to NT$300,000, he said.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2