All schools nationwide, including public and private kindergartens, are to suspend in-person instruction from today until Friday next week, the Ministry of Education announced yesterday.
The measure is being taken to reduce the risk of COVID-19 cluster infections, the ministry said in a statement.
Centers providing after-school childcare services, cram schools and other educational institutions must also suspend classes during that period, it said.
Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times
Schools are to shift to online teaching, with students engaging in remote learning at home, the ministry said.
There would be no makeup classes over the summer vacation, it said.
Local governments would help students borrow the resources they need, while schools would lend equipment such as laptops and tablets to students and teachers without access to those devices, the ministry said, adding that students from disadvantaged backgrounds would be given priority.
As a general rule, faculty and staff would still work at the school, but schools can arrange for those conducting online teaching to do so from school or home depending on resources, the ministry said.
Parents who need to care for a child under the age of 12 or a child with a documented disability who is attending junior-high or high school, or in the first three years of a five-year junior college program, can apply for “disease prevention childcare leave,” the ministry said.
If the parents of a student below high-school level are unable to be at home to take care of them, or if a student is unable to learn from home, schools should arrange for people to provide the student with the ability to study and eat, and be taken care of, at school, it said.
Local governments should provide food for disadvantaged students below high-school level during the period of online learning, it added.
Local governments and schools are to set up helplines to offer parents and teachers advice and assistance during the online learning period, and to monitor the health of students learning from home, the ministry said.
As of Monday, 37 students — 16 college students, four high-school students, six junior-high students, seven elementary school students and four kindergarten students — had tested positive for COVID-19, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center, said at the center’s daily news conference in Taipei yesterday.
The nationwide suspension of all in-person instruction comes after Taipei and New Taipei City on Monday announced that public and private junior-high and high schools, vocational high schools, elementary schools, kindergartens, after-school care centers and cram schools would be closed from yesterday to Friday next week.
A level 3 COVID-19 alert in the two cities is in effect until Friday next week.
Additional reporting by CNA
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS