The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) has moved up plans to start taking the temperatures of passengers at some of its bigger stations to Wednesday next week after Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers criticized it for not planning to start such a program until mid-May.
DPP legislators Lai Hui-yuan (賴惠員), Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書), Wang Mei-hui (王美惠) and Huang Shih-chieh (黃世杰) yesterday questioned why the TRA was waiting until the middle of May to take the temperature of all passengers, when the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) began doing so as of the middle of this month.
They urged the agency to move faster so that it would not become a loophole in the nation’s disease-prevention network.
The agency later announced that people wanting to enter all 34 of its special-class and first-class stations must have their temperatures taken first as of Wednesday.
It has 241 stations nationwide, and it is not easy to acquire thermometers these days, although it placed orders for them last month, the agency said.
It is also recruiting people with nursing or healthcare backgrounds to take people’s temperatures at 20 large stations, it added.
With the help of the Central Epidemic Command Center, it plans to implement the temperature-taking in phases, it said.
Of the 34 stations that would begin taking temperatures next week, 22 would use infrared imaging and 12 would use forehead thermometers, with the goal of measuring about 70 percent of the passengers accessing the stations, it said.
“We would quickly implement the same requirement at the rest of our stations, but the progress depends on whether we have enough forehead thermometers and if we have enough personnel to do so,” it said, adding that it aims for the policy to be implemented at all stations by April 30.
People who have a temperature of at least 37.5°C would be measured a second time, and if the reading is the same, they would be asked to return home or seek medical attention, it said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS