Vending machines at the Xinyi District Health Center (信義健康中心) are to continue to sell masks on Sundays, even if pharmacies and local health centers no longer sell them on that day, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday.
The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) on Friday announced that starting today, government-requisitioned masks are not to be distributed to pharmacies and local health centers on Sundays so that their staff can rest one day per week.
The city’s 11 district health centers are to stop selling masks on Sundays, but people can still buy them from the Xinyi District Health Center’s vending machines on Sunday mornings, the department said in a statement about the policy.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
The vending machines are available to the public from 8:30am to 6:30pm on weekdays and 8:30am to 12pm on weekends, it said.
At the vending machines, people must insert their National Health Insurance card — as long as it has not been used to buy masks for two weeks — and then pay with cash, or a mobile payment service, the department added.
The Taipei City Government, in cooperation with the CECC and the National Health Insurance Administration, launched the nation’s first mask vending machines at the Xinyi District Health Center on April 11.
The vending machines are efficient and spare people from the long lines at pharmacies, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said, adding that machines should be installed at all 12 of the city’s district health centers within a week.
However, on April 12 — the first day — people began lining up as early as two hours before the vending machines became available, and city councilors questioned whether the machines were more efficient, as health center workers had to instruct people on how to use them.
A total of 4,614 batches, or 41,526 masks, were sold from the center’s three vending machines from April 11 to Thursday, the Taipei Department of Information Technology said yesterday.
Most people used the machines on weekday afternoons and bought masks without waiting — the fastest time for buying two batches was 30 seconds, while one-and-a-half minutes was the slowest, it added.
921 EARTHQUAKE: The magnitude 7.3 quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged The Central Weather Bureau yesterday received about 50,000 views on Facebook after it posted the data that it collected on Sept. 21, 1999, when the nation was devastated by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake. The data showed that the 921 Earthquake hit the nation at 1:47am, with the epicenter being 7km southwest of the bureau’s quake detection center in Nantou County’s Yuchi Township (魚池) at a depth of 8km. The quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged, with the cost of the damage estimated at NT$300 billion (US$10.8 billion at the current
British newspaper The Mail on Sunday reported that Prince Charles met with Bruno Wang (汪家興), a Taiwanese fugitive who describes himself as a Chinese philanthropist and donated ￡500,000 (US$683,522) to the prince’s charity, the Prince’s Foundation. The newspaper reported that Wang is wanted in Taiwan on charges related to money laundering and being a fugitive from justice, allegations he denies, and drew comparisons between Wang and the Russian banker Dmitry Leus. Investigation and cooperation with foreign authorities have found that Bruno Wang’s father, Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), had stashed proceeds from a scandal involving the procurement of Lafayette frigates in 61 bank accounts,
AT ODDS: The KMT called on the government to seek bilateral dialogue with Beijing to resolve the issue that led to the ban on custard apple and wax apple imports Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials and lawmakers yesterday condemned China’s sudden ban on imports of custard apples and wax apples from Taiwan as “obvious political retaliation,” while the opposition called for a scientific investigation into Beijing’s claim to have found pests in imports of the fruits. China earlier yesterday announced a ban on the importation of the two fruits from today, citing repeated discoveries of Planococcus minor, a type of mealybug. The announcement follows a similar ban on Taiwanese pineapples imposed in February. At least Beijing gave a few days’ notice when it banned pineapple imports, an unnamed government official said yesterday. This time
BY OTHER MEANS: China could see CPTPP membership as a means of circumventing trade restrictions imposed by the US, amid an ongoing trade dispute between them The US could invoke a clause in its trade agreement with Canada and Mexico to block China’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a government official said yesterday. Under Article 32.10 of the Exceptions and General Provisions of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), if either Canada or Mexico enter a free-trade agreement with a nonmarket economy — such as China — the US could withdraw from the agreement. “If that clause applies to multilateral free-trade agreements such as the CPTPP — which Mexico and Canada are members of — that might be cause for the two
RSS