Taipei residents diagnosed with COVID-19 should remain under house quarantine for 17 days, effective immediately, Taipei City Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) said yesterday.
The announcement followed the Central Epidemic Command Center’s (CECC) most recent policy asking people diagnosed with COVID-19, but who show no or only mild symptoms, to remain in home quarantine to prevent hospitals from being flooded with patients.
People who exhibit symptoms and cannot quarantine at their registered residence would be moved to hotels set up with isolation facilities for 10 days, Huang said.
If after 10 days they no longer exhibit COVID-19 symptoms and doctors approve their release, they would be allowed to quarantine at home for a week, she said, adding that the hospital or screening stations would have designated taxis transport them to their home.
Taipei hospitals have been at or near capacity dealing with patients exhibiting mild or no symptoms who were previously unable to leave due to epidemic prevention restrictions, but as of yesterday, these patients can be moved to designated quarantine facilities, Huang said.
This would resolve issues of people arriving at hospitals where there were no available beds in isolation wards, she added.
There was also a significant discrepancy in the number of available hospital beds the CECC sees in its system — 682 — compared with the 20 available beds that the Taipei City Government’s data show, she said.
The situation at hospitals is in constant flux, and the CECC cannot know what is going on without being present, she added.
“We are coming up daily with ways to simplify procedures to allow medical personnel to see to more people,” she said, urging the public to give hotels and staff working around the clock more encouragement and empathy.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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