A wide-scale COVID-19 screening program would be conducted in Keelung, offering government-funded at-home rapid test kits to 360,000 local residents in light of a cluster that has expanded to 68 cases, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday.
The virus seems to have been spreading in communities in Keelung for quite some time and it would be difficult to find undetected cases at testing stations, Chen said during a visit to Keelung.
The details of the screening program, including the method to distribute and collect the kits, are still being discussed, said Chen, who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).
Photo: Lu Hsien-hsiu, Taipei Times
The CECC yesterday reported 56 local COVID-19 infections.
There are 19 local transmission chains with unknown infection sources, it said, adding that the cluster in Keelung is the most concerning, as it involves several businesses and a school.
The Keelung cluster added 19 new cases yesterday, Chen said.
Photo courtesy of the Central Epidemic Command Center
It does not seem to be coming under control, so it must be closely monitored, he said.
A cluster involving workers at a chemical plant in Kaohsiung seems to be under control, as no new cases have been found in the past three days other than people who were already isolating at home, including one case confirmed yesterday — a family member of a previous case, Chen said.
Two local cases yesterday were linked to a cluster of infections in Taitung, he said.
Photo: CNA
They are a colleague of a previous case and a participant at a religious event that another previous case attended, he said.
The Taitung cluster has expanded to 11 cases, Chen said.
Six local cases were yesterday linked to a cluster involving workers at a technology firm in New Taipei City’s Shulin District (樹林), with four among them — three workers and a family member of a previous case — testing positive while isolating, while the other two workers had symptoms when under self-health management, he said.
The Shulin cluster has expanded to 29 cases, he said.
Genome sequencing showed that three cases in the Shulin cluster were infected with a new strain of the Omicron BA.2.3 subvariant of SARS-CoV-2, Chen said.
Six new cases were confirmed in a cluster involving residents of an apartment building in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和), Chen said.
They were: Two family members, two people at a clinic that previous cases had visited, a student at a cram school attended by a previous case and a person who visited the same place as a previous case, Chen said.
Twelve of yesterday’s new cases are linked to a cluster involving workers at a power plant construction site in Taoyuan and its dormitories in Hsinchu County, he said, adding that one of the cases is concerning, as he is a worker at a separate, larger construction site, so expanded testing is being conducted.
The Taoyuan cluster has expanded to 78 cases, he said.
A new case is linked to a cluster involving a salesperson in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重), with genome sequencing showing that the woman is infected with the BA.2 Omicron subvariant, the 23rd Omicron strain detected in Taiwan, Chen said.
Another case is a family member of a case in a Taipei cluster linked to a care worker and her employer, he said.
Other cases were: a resident of New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) who works at a massage parlor in Taipei; a police officer who works at a centralized quarantine facility in New Taipei City; two dance instructors in Taoyuan who taught classes in Taipei and Yilan; two Taipei residents and a Keelung resident who works in Kaohsiung who attended a wedding in Taichung; and a case reported in New Taipei City yesterday morning, Chen said.
The CECC yesterday also confirmed 107 imported cases.
US PUBLICATION: The results indicated a change in attitude after a 2023 survey showed 55 percent supported full-scale war to achieve unification, the report said More than half of Chinese were against the use of force to unify with Taiwan under any circumstances, a survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University found. The survey results, which were released on Wednesday in a report titled “Sovereignty, Security, & US-China Relations: Chinese Public Opinion,” showed that 55.1 percent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that “the Taiwan problem should not be resolved using force under any circumstances,” while 24.5 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disagreed with the statement. The results indicated a change in attitude after a survey published in “Assessing Public Support for (Non)Peaceful Unification
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
‘MISGUIDED EDICT’: Two US representatives warned that Somalia’s passport move could result in severe retaliatory consequences and urged it to reverse its decision Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has ordered that a special project be launched to counter China’s “legal warfare” distorting UN Resolution 2758, a foreign affairs official said yesterday. Somalia’s Civil Aviation Authority on Wednesday cited UN Resolution 2758 and Mogadishu’s compliance with the “one China” principle as it banned people from entering or transiting in the African nation using Taiwanese passports or other Taiwanese travel documents. The International Air Transport Association’s system shows that Taiwanese passport holders cannot enter Somalia or transit there. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) protested the move and warned Taiwanese against traveling to Somalia or Somaliland