National Taiwan University public health experts yesterday said that all foreign students and workers should undergo a centralized quarantine upon arrival in Taiwan, as well as being tested for COVID-19 upon arrival and departure.
The Central Epidemic Command Center on Monday reported a case of a Thai worker who tested positive for COVID-19 after returning to Thailand from Taiwan last week, saying that it could not rule out the possibility that it was a locally acquired case.
National Taiwan University College of Public Health dean Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權) said that following last month’s case of a student testing positive for COVID-19 in Japan after returning from Taiwan and the new case in Thailand, many people are worried about asymptomatic carriers in local communities in Taiwan.
“The cases imply that there is a remaining threat of potential asymptomatic carriers in local communities,” Chan said. “They also tell us that foreign students and workers should undergo a mandatory centralized quarantine, as it would be difficult to do contact tracing if a positive case is confirmed among them.”
“We also believe that foreign students and workers should be tested for COVID-19 upon arrival and on their departure from Taiwan,” he said. “Digital contact tracing for these foreign students and workers, who might not have smartphones, should also be improved.”
The center and the Ministry of Labor should have a comprehensive disease prevention plan for migrant workers, including conducting mass testing on all workers at the factory where the Thai patient worked and all their close contacts, as well as moving migrant workers to individual dormitory rooms, and separate the flow of workers in the factory and the dormitory, Chan said.
Other preventive measures should include testing of all foreign workers when they enter and leave Taiwan, conducting safety and hygiene inspections of foreign workers’ working and living environments, and conducting COVID-19 antibody tests on all foreign workers, he said.
College vice dean Tony Chen (陳秀熙) said that data on clustered infections on cruise ships showed the exceptionally high risk of COVID-19 spreading in high-density environments, and the limitations of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction tests in detecting pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers.
In addition to contact tracing and COVID-19 testing, antibody testing should also be used for members of highly clustered groups, such as migrant workers, to find potential asymptomatic carriers that could become the source of additional local infections, Chen said.
As the influenza season occurs between autumn and spring, both diseases have very similar symptoms and many experts have predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic could get worse in the winter, the government should develop kits that can test for both influenza and COVID-19, Chan said.
He also urged the government to join international research teams developing COVID-19 vaccines as soon as possible, or the nation could face problems such as not having priority in purchasing a vaccine once it goes on sale or domestically produced vaccines being unable to obtain international verification.
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:
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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