Hundreds of Taiwanese who were evacuated earlier this month from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the COVID-19 pandemic first emerged, were yesterday released from their 14-day quarantine.
The 361 — who returned to Taiwan on March 10 and 11 on two charter flights and were immediately quarantined at three facilities in New Taipei City and Taoyuan — thanked medical staff for their care and started leaving the facilities at about 6am.
Two of the evacuees developed a fever during their time in quarantine, but later tested negative for the novel coronavirus after two rounds of testing, officials in charge of the facilities said.
Facility workers arranged shuttle buses to take some of the evacuees to high-speed rail or MRT stations, while others were picked up relatives and friends.
Before the evacuees left, their temperatures were taken and they were disinfected at a checkpoint to ensure that they were in good condition.
One of the evacuees was a woman surnamed Hsiao (蕭), who traveled to Hubei Province with her Chinese husband and their son to visit her husband’s family before the Lunar New Year holiday and were stranded during the outbreak.
Hsiao said that while the family’s return home had been delayed for 42 days by the spread of the virus and quarantine, they were still delighted to be back.
Her husband, surnamed Xiang (向), said that they received good care during the quarantine, ate well and lived in a good environment.
Although the family was separated in three rooms, they communicated by telephone and the Internet to let each other know how much they missed each other, he said.
A 13-year-old female evacuee wrote a letter thanking Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), medical staff and unsung heroes at her quarantine facility.
“Taiwan will win the battle against the virus,” the girl said in the letter.
The government on Feb. 3 carried out the first evacuation of 247 people from Wuhan.
All but one of the 247 Taiwanese were released from quarantine on Feb. 18 after testing negative for the coronavirus, while the one evacuee who tested positive was discharged from a hospital on Feb. 27.
A Keelung high school on Saturday night apologized for using a picture containing a Chinese flag on the cover of the senior yearbook, adding that it has recalled the books and pledged to provide students new ones before graduation on Thursday. Of 309 Affiliated Keelung Maritime Senior High School of National Taiwan Ocean University graduates, 248 had purchased the yearbook. Some students said that the printer committed an outrageous error in including the picture, while others said that nobody would notice such a small flag on the cover. Other students said that they cared more about the photographs of classmates and what was
GOING INTERNATIONAL: Rakuten Girls squad leader Ula Shen said she was surprised that baseball fans outside of Taiwan not only knew of them, but also knew their names Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Oakland Athletics on Saturday hosted its first Taiwanese Heritage Day event at the Oakland Coliseum with a performance by Taiwanese cheerleading squad the Rakuten Girls and a video message from Vice President William Lai (賴清德). The Rakuten Girls, who are the cheerleaders for the CPBL’s Rakuten Monkeys, performed in front of a crowd of more than 2,000 people, followed by a prerecorded address by Lai about Taiwan’s baseball culture and democratic spirit. Taiwanese pitcher Sha Tzu-chen (沙子宸), who was signed by the Athletics earlier this year, was also present. Mizuki Lin (林襄), considered a “baseball cheerleading goddess” by Taiwanese
A 14-legged giant isopod is the highlight of a new dish at a ramen restaurant in Taipei and it has people lining up — both for pictures and for a bite from this bowl of noodles. Since “The Ramen Boy” launched the limited-edition noodle bowl on Monday last week, declaring in a social media post that it had “finally got this dream ingredient,” more than 100 people have joined a waiting list to dine at the restaurant. “It is so attractive because of its appearance — it looks very cute,” said the 37-year-old owner of the restaurant, who wanted to be
EVA Airways was ranked the eighth-best airline in the world for this year, the only Taiwanese carrier to make it into the top 25 Airline Excellence Awards this year, aviation reviews Web site AirlineRatings.com said on Wednesday. AirlineRatings.com has a seven-star rating system to evaluate more than 360 airlines around the world every year, EVA Airways said in a statement on Thursday. “We are delighted that efforts by the entire EVA staff have been recognized by Airline Ratings,” EVA Airways president Clay Sun (孫嘉明) said in the release. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company identified and adopted services and procedures that enhance and
RSS