The post-holiday start date for schools from senior high and below has been pushed back two weeks to Feb. 25 due to the global spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) announced yesterday.
While the outbreak of the virus in China is still serious, Taiwan has not seen a local outbreak, but the center is concerned about the risk of cluster infections once students return to school, said the center’s head, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中).
“The command center’s specialist meeting suggested pushing back the start of classes to reduce the risk of clustered infections,” he said.
Photo: CNA
Extending the winter break means the first day of the new semester for levels for all schools at the senior high level and below has been pushed back from Feb. 11 to Feb. 25, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said.
Students’ education would not suffer and the number of school days would not be cut, but the summer break would be pushed back from July 1 to July 15, Pan said.
“The dates remain the same for the Comprehensive Assessment Program for Junior High School Students exams, the Entrance Examination for Technological and Vocational Education, and the College Entrance Examination,” Pan said.
However, the examination paper-setting will be adjusted according to the postponed school schedule, so that examinees’ rights would not be affected by the policy, he added.
A new semester schedule for universities is to be discussed today at a meeting with university officials and would be announced after the meeting, Pan said.
Minister of Labor Hsu Ming-chun (許銘春) said that the rights of working parents with young children should not be harmed by the extended winter break.
A parent of a child under 12 years old can ask their employer for “disease prevention childcare leave” during the two weeks, Hsu said.
“As it is a special policy, the employers are required to approve the child-care leave request, and they cannot deem an employee absent from work or make them take personal or other types of leave, nor can they dismiss or punish the employee or deprive them of a perfect attendance record,” she said.
However, a company can decide whether the employee who takes such leave should receive their salary during the leave, she said.
The Ministry of Labor understands that the policy might cause human resource difficulties, but it hopes employers can help as the nation faces this difficult time.
As for the spread of the virus in Taiwan, the CECC said 89 new cases of severe pneumonia with novel pathogens were reported on Saturday, bringing the nationwide total to 1,007 cases, including 10 confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV infection, but 829 people have been ruled out, and the rest are under quarantine.
No new confirmed case of 2019-nCoV was reported on Saturday, and the 10 patients with confirmed cases are in stable condition and still receiving treatment, with just one having a fever and one requiring oxygen.
One of the 2019-nCoV patients being treated has since tested negative for the virus twice, but they would not be discharged from the hospital until their condition has been assessed by specialists and another test comes back negative, the CECC said.
WENZHOU ALERT
At 8pm last night, the CECC announced that Wenzhou, in China’s Zhejiang Province, has been listed as a secondary epidemic area.
As of today, Taiwanese and foreign residents who have visited Wenzhou in the past 14 days would be put under a 14-day home quarantine after returning to Taiwan, while residents of Wenzhou are banned from visiting Taiwan, Centers for Disease Control Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said.
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
PUBLIC POLL: More than half believe Chinese drills would make Taiwanese less willing to unify with China, while 36 percent said an invasion was highly unlikely Half of Taiwanese support independence, according to the results of a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, which also found that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) support rating fell by 7 percentage points. Fifty percent of respondents supported independence, 25.7 percent supported maintaining the “status quo” and 11.8 percent supported unification, while 12.1 percent had no opinion, did not know or refused to answer, the foundation said. Support for independence is the new mainstream opinion, regardless of which party is in power, foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said. Insinuations that Taiwan wants to maintain the “status quo” are a fabrication that
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old