The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) intends to accelerate plans to fully reopen Taiwan’s borders once the next COVID-19 wave subsides, in October at the earliest.
Addressing the Taipei Tourism Exposition yesterday, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said she has instructed the Executive Yuan to establish a timeline and draft measures for reopening the nation’s borders for tourism.
A Cabinet official yesterday afternoon said it was carefully considering the matter and would reassess the situation next month.
Photo: CNA
The government has been preparing to ease border restrictions, but the schedule has been continually pushed back due to increasing infection rates in nearby countries, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said at the Green Dining Guide Annual Awards Ceremony.
The government must be careful and only ease border controls once all sectors are satisfied that doing so would not endanger lives, Su said.
Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝), who heads the CECC, told a regular news conference that the center must balance pandemic control, tourism and the economy.
Photo: CNA
The CECC estimates that infection rates of the Omicron BA.5 subvariant of SARS-CoV-2 could peak around the end of next month or early October, Wang said, adding that infections in northern Taiwan are increasing.
However, changes must be gradual, by for instance removing the “one person, one room” policy during the self-health management period or increasing the maximum number of people allowed to enter Taiwan, Wang said.
The possibility of allowing tour groups to enter and shortening quarantine would be implemented in stages, but could accelerate once the coming wave passes, Wang said, adding that the CECC has received the Tourism Bureau’s draft guidelines for travel agencies handling group tours.
The center commended the bureau for thinking ahead, although many of the guidelines have not been finalized, Wang said, adding that the CECC plans to consult the bureau as plans are refined.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education and local governments have agreed on school pandemic measures as the new academic year is set to begin, the CECC said.
For the first four weeks, if one person in a class is diagnosed with COVID-19, the entire class is to be canceled or must study remotely for three days, it said.
Students would undergo rapid screening tests if a case is detected in their school, and each student is to have the option to take days off if they are unsure whether they are infected, it said.
The ministry is to announce the new policy on Monday.
Additionally, the CECC announced that vaccinations for young children are to start from Saturday next week after it received 1.28 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 6 months to 4 years.
The announcement came as the CECC reported 22,559 new domestic cases of COVID-19 and 32 deaths from the disease.
Additional reporting by Lee Hsin-fang and CNA
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
TAIWAN ISSUE: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on the first day of meetings that ‘it wouldn’t be a US-China summit without the Taiwan issue coming up’ There were no surprises on the first day of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, as the government reiterated that cross-strait stability is crucial to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the world. As the two presidents met for a highly anticipated summit yesterday, Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Trump that missteps regarding Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict.” Trump arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend,” and extending an invitation to visit the White House
RSS