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.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai
RSS