Taipei Chief Prosecutor Chen Ta-wei (
"With Center for Disease Control (CDC) officials' advice, we decided to do so because their quarantine period is completed," Chen said yesterday. "Their testimonies will be crucial in deciding whether the hospital should be blamed for the outbreak of SARS last month."
To investigate and decide who should take responsibility for the outbreak, Chen said prosecutors have interviewed more than 20 doctors, nurses, patients and officials in the past two weeks.
Those interviewed include Shin Kong Wu Ho-su Memorial Hospital Deputy Superintendent Huang Fang-yen (黃芳彥), former CDC director-general Chen Tzay-jinn (陳再晉), former Taipei City Bureau of Health director Yeh Chin-chuan (葉金川), current CDC Director-General Su Yi-jen (蘇益仁) and Hoping Hospital's Emergency Room Director Chang Yu-tai (張裕泰).
"Interviews with related personnel are completed. Now, we need to hear what [Wu and Lin] will say," Chen Ta-wei said.
According to Chen, former health director Yeh advised prosecutors to look up the patients' records because they would contain more useful information to help the prosecutors find out whether the Hoping Hospital had been honest and open in its reports to the Department of Health and Taipei's Bureau of Health
Prosecutors asked for access to the patients' files and CDC officials entered the Hoping Hospital on Tuesday to collect the records for March, April and May.
According to the prosecutors' office, prosecutors will expose these files to direct sunlight for more than 24 hours before handling them to make sure that the documents do not carry any SARS virus.
While the antiparasitic drug ivermectin is being touted as a treatment for COVID-19 in many parts of the world, Taiwanese experts on Monday warned against regular use of the drug in COVID-19 treatment, citing a lack of solid evidence. “Following an experts’ meeting, we do not recommend regular use of ivermectin in treating COVID-19 due to the lack of enough evidence,” said Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳), convener of the Central Epidemic Command Center’s (CECC) expert advisory panel. A report in the American Journal of Therapeutics said that meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients had found large,
CLASSES HALTED: Cram schools have had to return tuition fees due to mandatory closures and might need to lay off half of their staff because of a lack of revenue The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the education sector, with some cram schools and tutoring centers saying they might soon be unable to pay their instructors due to the extension of a nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert. The heightened alert level means schools must remain closed, so cram schools and tutoring centers have had to return tuition fees, one cram school said. June is normally the peak season for recruiting new students at cram schools and tutoring centers, but this year many such schools might need to lay off half of their staff due to a lack of
A person who was on Friday reported as the first in Taiwan to die after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine died of a heart attack, a Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) official said yesterday. The deceased, whose sex and age were not disclosed, had coronary artery disease, which led to a fatal heart attack, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the CECC’s spokesman, told a news conference, citing the autopsy report. It was the first death listed as a possible adverse event after receiving the AstraZenenca COVID-19 vaccine since the start of the vaccination program on March 22. The
Taichung, Kaohsiung and Chiayi County are to adopt a COVID-19 vaccine administration method invented in a town in Japan to make the inoculation process easier for elderly people, the local governments said. Under the method, dubbed the “Umi-machi style,” seniors who go to get their jabs at designated venues remain seated while a team of medical staff move from one person to another to administer their shots. Umi, a town in Fukuoka Prefecture, conceived of the idea by observing Toyota’s vehicle assembly lines, which are renowned for being efficient. Taichung, which has about 36,000 people older than 85, would try to
RSS