Two Taiwanese groups in the Philippines have donated urgently needed masks to local healthcare efforts in a bid to help contain COVID-19.
The Taiwanese Compatriot Association on Wednesday gave more than 5,000 masks to the Philippines Department of Health, association supervisor Edison Lin (林坤城) said.
The association has pledged to donate 10,000 masks to the Philippines, Lin said, adding that because of supply issues, the donation would be divided into two batches.
The masks would help the Philippines battle the coronavirus, as well as promote goodwill between Taiwanese and Filipinos, Lin added.
The virus has had a considerable effect on people in the Philippines, including Taiwanese businesspeople, especially in Metro Manila, association vice president Jack Hsieh (謝嘉卿) said.
“Everyone is confined to their homes due to the community quarantine measures,” said Hsieh, who runs a Taiwanese fast food chain in the Philippines. “We can’t work. Workers who receive their salary on a weekly basis and have no savings might soon run short of cash.”
Taiwanese businesspeople are doing their best to help, Hsieh said.
“For example, our firm distributed packages of food and other necessities to our employees,” he said.
On Tuesday, the Taiwanese Association in the Philippines, a group of Taiwanese businesspeople, donated 10,000 masks to Philippine General Hospital, one of the medical facilities designated by the Philippine government as a COVID-19 treatment center.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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