Starting next week, the mandatory home quarantine for inbound travelers is to be shortened to seven days, followed by seven days of self-health management, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that travelers on flights arriving in Taiwan after 12am on Monday would need to quarantine at home for seven days, not 10 days.
People in quarantine would need to be tested for COVID-19 twice: a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test at the airport upon their arrival (day zero) and a rapid COVID-19 test on the day of their release from quarantine (day 7), Chen said.
Photo: CNA
If symptoms arise during quarantine, the traveler should conduct a rapid test and report to their local health department if the result is positive, he said.
The quarantine principle is still “one person per household,” and if the requirement cannot be met, the inbound traveler should quarantine at a hotel for seven days, he added.
Two at-home rapid test kits are provided to inbound travelers at the airport: one for the final required test and one in the case of symptoms, the center said.
Photo: Taipei Times
Only PCR tests should be used for quarantined infants under the age of two, it said.
People can ask local authorities for assistance if they have trouble conducting a rapid test.
Chen said the center should consider exempting people from isolation if they have received a booster shot and can provide a negative result to a rapid COVID-19 test.
He made the comment after being asked to confirm a Mirror Media magazine report about a plan to drop the home isolation policy from next month if the percentage of Taiwanese with a booster shot rises, and COVID-19 cases with severe complications and deaths remain low.
“Similar plans are being discussed, but many factors continue to change — so I will announce plans when they have been finalized,” Chen said.
Separately, National Taiwan University College of Public Health professor Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權) on Monday wrote that the average incidence rate of COVID-19 in Taiwan over the past week was about 387 per million, comparable to the nation’s main trading partners (between two and 415 per million) and that the number of new domestic cases was 46 to 113 times the number of imported cases on a given day.
As Taiwan relies heavily on global trade and international exchanges, and the government is transitioning toward living with the virus, border controls should be revised, he said, adding that the quarantine measures for confirmed cases and their close contacts should be similar.
Chan said that officials should consider the methods adopted by countries that have reopened their borders by first easing restrictions on foreign travelers with a booster shot and a negative test result.
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