The Ministry of National Defense yesterday temporarily suspended overseas travel to selected areas by military personnel to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Ministry spokesman Major General Shih Shun-wen (史順文) said the suspension was due to the rising threat of the virus.
The ministry is asking personnel whose applications for overseas travel were already approved prior to the ban to delay or cancel their trips, Shih said.
Photo: CNA
Military personnel who insist on traveling overseas require special approval from a superior officer and would be quarantined for 14 days when they return, he said.
The ministry considers disease prevention to be as serious as combat, and would continue to follow the advice of the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), he added.
Meanwhile, the ministry would maintain normal training operations to ensure the military’s combat readiness, Shih said.
The restrictions come after the WHO on Wednesday declared the virus a pandemic, and follows a travel advisory implemented last month.
The military advisory was to prevent an outbreak among military personnel responsible for national security, Shih said.
It covers the following 29 countries and territories listed by Taiwan as posing a risk of infection for travelers: Australia, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the US, the UK and Vietnam.
Last month, the CECC also announced a temporary suspension of overseas travel by frontline doctors and nurses working in hospitals.
It said that with the current shortage of workers in the healthcare system, Taiwan cannot afford to put its medical personnel into 14-day quarantine when they return from trips abroad.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not