The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported three new imported cases of COVID-19, bringing the nation’s total confirmed cases to 802.
Two of the cases involved Indonesian fishers in their 20s who arrived in Taiwan on Dec. 17, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division, told a news conference.
The two presented certificates of negative test results performed within three days of boarding their flights to Taiwan and showed no COVID-19 symptoms during their 14-day mandatory quarantine, Lo said.
Photo: CNA
On Wednesday, they took a test before the end of their quarantine, which yesterday confirmed that they had contracted COVID-19, Lo said, adding that they remain asymptomatic.
Since the two migrant workers did not make contact with others during their quarantine, contact tracing was not needed.
The other case is a Taiwanese man in his 20s who was a long-time resident of the US and came back to Taiwan on Saturday last week, Lo said.
The man also presented a certificate of a negative test result before boarding his flight to Taiwan, the CECC said.
During his home quarantine, he developed a fever on Tuesday, and sought treatment at a hospital, where he took a COVID-19 test, Lo said, adding that the result came back positive yesterday.
Because hospital personnel who had contact with the man were protected, no contact tracing was necessary, Lo said.
Of the nation’s confirmed COVID-19 cases, 707 have been classified as imported, 682 have recovered, 113 are hospitalized and seven have died, CECC data showed.
In related news, the Ministry of Education on Thursday issued a directive to schools, telling them to stop accepting entry permit applications for international students for at least one month.
The directive follows the CECC’s announcement on Wednesday that only Taiwanese citizens, residents and people in a few other categories would be allowed to enter the nation starting yesterday in response to a new variant of the COVID-19 virus first detected in the UK.
The suspension applies to all foreign students, including those from China, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as recipients of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Taiwan Scholarship, the Ministry of Education said.
Forty-nine international students that have already obtained entry permits, but have not yet arrived, would be allowed to enter, it said.
No new applications would be accepted by schools, with immediate effect, the ministry said, adding that the decision would be reviewed in a month’s time after consultations with the CECC.
The ministry did not give an estimate of how many foreign students would be affected.
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
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
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