The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported one new imported case of COVID-19, a Taiwanese woman in her 30s who traveled to the Philippines in late January for work.
Case No. 452 returned to the nation alone on Tuesday, the center said.
On June 30, her company arranged for her to take an antibody test, the result of which was negative, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the center’s spokesman, said at a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Tony Yao, Taipei Times
On Tuesday afternoon, the woman began experiencing an “abnormal” sense of smell, which she reported to authorities when she arrived in Taiwan that night, he said.
She was tested for COVID-19 at the airport, before being sent to a quarantine facility, the center said.
On her flight to Taiwan, the patient was seated in the first row and wore a mask for the duration of the flight, Chuang said.
Photo: Tony Yao, Taipei Times
Health authorities have identified 12 people as having had contact with case No. 452, including a passenger who was seated in the row behind her, and 11 flight crew members, the center said.
The other passenger has been placed under home isolation, while the crew members, who had taken proper protective measures, are practicing self-health management, it added.
As of yesterday, Taiwan has recorded 452 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 361 imported cases, 55 local infections and 36 cases from the navy’s “Friendship Flotilla,” as well as seven deaths, CECC data showed.
Meanwhile, Taoyuan International Airport Corp yesterday began using new facilities to collect specimens to test for COVID-19 at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
The specimen-collection structures, two converted 12.19m shipping containers, will be where passengers visiting or returning from pandemic-affected nations or regions can be tested.
The containers — outside Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 — were designed to meet requirements governing the collection of diagnostic specimens from air passengers, the airport operator said.
Each has five inspection rooms, where staff and passengers are separated by walls and acrylic partitions, it said, adding that they have separate air-conditioning systems as well.
When necessary, each inspection room can accommodate more than one passenger at a time, the company said.
Staff members only need to wear gloves, insert their hands into two holes in the partition and gather samples, it said.
Each inspection room would be ventilated through a high-efficiency particulate air system, and workers use alcohol and ultraviolet light to disinfect and sterilize the facilities, it said.
All samples are temporarily stored in a separate room before being sent to medical laboratories, to prevent the spread of the disease, the company said.
The airport had previously used two makeshift facilities outside the terminals to collect specimens. Each was built with wooden partitions and did not have a roof for ventilation purposes, it said, adding that staff members were required to wear full protective gear and could only handle one passenger at a time.
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