The Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Taoyuan General Hospital is expected to resume normal operations on Friday, following the successful containment of a COVID-19 cluster infection at the facility, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday.
Chen, who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), said the cluster — which began on Jan. 12 with the infection of a doctor who was treating COVID-19 patients and resulting in 21 infections, including one death — had been “brought to a close.”
In response to the cluster, the ministry on Jan. 22 initiated a plan to evacuate patients from high-risk areas of the hospital and reduce outpatient services.
Photo: Wu Po-hsuan, Taipei Times
On Feb. 7, it announced that COVID-19 tests conducted on more than 2,000 hospital employees had yielded negative results, while samples taken from 585 wards and waiting rooms also tested negative for the novel coronavirus.
Chen said the hospital would report to the ministry after the Lunar New Year holiday and is likely to resume normal operations on Friday, barring any unforeseen issues.
Earlier yesterday, Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) said that 3,423 people had been tested in connection with the cluster, and that two temporary quarantine facilities near the hospital had been closed, bringing the cluster infection to an end.
“Taoyuan is not an epidemic area,” he added.
During the Lunar New Year holiday, visitor numbers to managed commercial and sightseeing areas rebounded to about 70 to 80 percent of capacity, he said, adding that the city government is working on an initiative to restore confidence and revive tourism.
The nation also reported no new COVID-19 infections for a third consecutive day yesterday.
Taiwan has recorded 937 cases, of which 821 have been classified as imported.
Of the total, 859 patients have recovered, nine have died and 69 are in hospital, CECC data showed.
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