The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) might shorten the quarantine period for inbound travelers to seven days after observing the COVID-19 situation for about a month, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday.
Chen, speaking at the Taipei Hotel Association’s annual banquet, said that while people in the tourism industry have suggested a “3-5-7” plan — reopening the border to business travelers this month, reopening to foreign tourists in May and allowing Taiwanese to travel abroad in July — the virus situation is uncontrollable, so the dates are difficult to set in advance.
However, the minister said there is a “7-5-3” quarantine plan that includes “priority travel bubbles” that is being mapped out.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The plan is to gradually reduce the mandatory quarantine period for inbound travelers from 10 days to seven days, then five days, then three days, before a full reopening without quarantine, said Chen, who heads the center.
The impact of reducing the quarantine period from 14 to 10 days, which took effect on Monday last week, would be monitored for a month and if the COVID-19 situation remains stable, the quarantine period could be further reduced to seven days, Chen said.
The risk of undetected COVID-19 cases among travelers quarantined for 10 days is about 1 percent, but the risk increases to 3.5 percent if they quarantine for seven days, he said, adding that preparations must therefore be made in advance.
The preparations would include teaching businesses in the tourism industry how to quickly handle the situation if an employee or customer tests positive for COVID-19 to stop the virus from spreading.
Reducing the quarantine period to fewer than seven days might be an incentive for more overseas Taiwanese, students and business travelers to visit Taiwan, but it would need to be reduced to fewer than five days to attract foreign tourists, which would be challenging as an expected 20 percent of cases could remain undetected after five days, he said.
Asked if allowing foreign tourists to visit Taiwan could be possible in May, Chen said it is most unlikely that they would be able to arrive and travel freely by May, but the center would also consider “priority travel bubbles” being suggested by the tourism industry, as well as assessing the global COVID-19 situation and local preparations, including vaccination coverage.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS