Anyone in Taiwan can now pay to be tested for the novel coronavirus, as the nation now has adequate testing capacity, the Central Epidemic Command Center said.
The announcement yesterday followed a decision on Saturday last week to offer self-paid testing to people traveling abroad, as many countries require a negative test result before admitting foreigners.
Self-paid testing was previously available only to Taiwanese making emergency visits to countries in Southeast Asia, China or Macau.
Photo: CNA
People can pay to be tested once every three months at a cost to be determined by hospitals, the center said.
The center yesterday reported one new case of COVID-19, a man in his 20s who returned from Russia on Tuesday.
The man was one of 96 people — 94 Taiwanese and two Russian spouses — who flew from Russia to Japan’s Narita International Airport on a Japan Airlines charter flight before taking another flight to Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Although he reported symptoms including a sore throat, loss of smell and fatigue upon arrival in Taiwan, the man’s first test returned only a slightly positive response that could be interpreted as negative, but his second test was positive, the center said.
As of yesterday, Taiwan recorded 442 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including seven fatalities, with 420 patients having been discharged from isolation after treatment, center data showed.
In related news, several deep-sea fishing vessels are expected to return to Taiwan to unload cargo and take on supplies, a transition period when the season for catching squid in the Atlantic ends and that for catching saury in the western North Pacific begins.
The fishing vessel Jyi Yang (佶洋) was the first to return to Kaohsiung’s Cianjhen Fishing Port (前鎮漁港) yesterday morning, with Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), Deputy Minister of the Interior Chen Tsung-yen (陳宗彥) and other officials on hand to inspect disease prevention procedures.
The vessel’s 52 crew members, including 47 foreign nationals, were sent to quarantine hotels after undergoing identity checks and basic disinfection, said Chen, who is deputy head of the center, at the center’s daily news briefing in Taipei yesterday afternoon.
The identity checks were conducted on board the ship by Coast Guard Administration personnel, Kaohsiung Department of Health officials assessed their health conditions and the National Immigration Agency issued temporary permits for the foreign crew, the Fisheries Agency said in a news release.
The entire process was smooth, Chen said, adding that nearly 4,050 fishers working in distant seas are expected to return in two batches by early July.
There are about 2,800 rooms at quarantine hotels nationwide, which would suffice for the returning fishers, Chen said, estimating that the daily maximum needed would be about 2,500 rooms.
Returning fishing vessel crews are another challenge for the government, although they are not as numerous as tourists at airports, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center.
Asked whether it was appropriate for Han to welcome the fishers by shaking their hands, Chen Shih-chung said that while extending a warm welcome is good, shaking hands or coming into close contact with those who need to be quarantined should be avoided.
Separately yesterday, the Taiwan Railways Administration and Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp said that food and beverages would be allowed on trains from Monday next week — ending a ban in place since early April.
People should still wear masks before and after eating, and practice social distancing, they said.
Additional reporting by CNA
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater