Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday said that he would ask government officials to assess the possibility of holding an online conference with international disease prevention experts to pass on the nation’s methods for containing COVID-19.
Su made the remark when asked by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Charles Chen (陳以信) whether Taiwan — which last month participated remotely in a WHO forum on critical research and the development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics — could convene an online conference on ways to contain the novel coronavirus.
As Taiwan has been the most successful nation in limiting the spread of the virus, the government could help other nations by inviting international disease prevention experts to participate in the conference, Chen said.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
The nation should capitalize on the opportunity with its first-rate disease prevention experts, such as Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) and Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳), who excels at holding online conferences, he said.
The nation should “show the world its loss for excluding [Taiwan] from the WHO,” he added.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week asked Chen Shih-chung to educate Taiwan’s foreign representatives on the nation’s disease prevention efforts in the hope of sharing such information with other nations, but the move would likely not be effective, as diplomats are not disease prevention specialists, Charles Chen said.
Convening an online conference on containing the virus would give the nation a perfect opportunity to raise its international profile and make its greatest contribution yet to global public health, he said.
Asked whether he was willing to test the proposal, Su said: “Yes.”
Charles Chen also requested that Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) identify who was in charge of negotiations for a second set of charter flights that evacuated 361 Taiwanese from Wuhan, China.
Chen Ming-tong declined to comment on the details of the negotiations out of concern that it could affect talks on further efforts to bring back Taiwanese stranded in Wuhan.
The council would take lawmakers’ questions after all negotiations have ended, he said.
Su said that the negotiations were not conducted between the governments on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, but by “relevant parties” acting on the governments’ instructions.
“We hoped to bring back our people, and we did, after many twists and turns… We hope to bring back many more people, so we will not reveal too much” about the negotiations, he said.
When told by Charles Chen that many people were “disheartened” after it took the government more than a month to arrange the second set of evacuation flights, Su said: “That is the result of ‘the other side’ insisting on this and that, which gave us a lot of trouble.”
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai
RSS