The Taichung City Government is asking all hostess bars and dance halls to suspend operations as part of an administrative order from the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), the city said yesterday.
The CECC on Wednesday issued the order after a hostess in Taipei tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Individuals or establishments that breach the order face fines of NT$3,000 to NT$15,000, in accordance with the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法), the municipality said.
Photo courtesy of the Taichung City Government
Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) said that similar businesses — KTVs, saunas, bars, nightclubs, “special service” cafes and arcades — are to continue to follow prevention guidelines, such as wearing masks, taking temperatures and observing social distancing.
The government is also enforcing new regulations for these establishments to record the names and telephone numbers of clients upon entry.
Lu said that the new regulations are being put in place not just because of the hostess case in Taipei, but also because of similar cases in the past.
The high client turnover at these businesses makes it difficult to track individual customers, adding to the difficulty of disease prevention and increasing the risk of local cluster infections, Lu said.
The city recognizes the concerns from the management of these businesses, but it asks them for their understanding and compliance in these trying times, Lu said.
Businesses must take special measures to maintain public health during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lu added.
Meanwhile, hostess bars on Wednesday closed early for establishment-wide disinfection after the Taipei Department of Health visited regarding the employee.
Hostesses typically come from third-party companies and do not have standing contracts with the hostess bars themselves, a source said, adding that the hostess who tested positive had been dispatched to other bars.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods