China Airlines (CAL) and Novotel Taipei Taoyuan International Airport hotel should bear most of the responsibility for the COVID-19 outbreak that prompted a nationwide alert, as they contravened quarantine regulations, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus said yesterday.
The airline failed to properly implement the “3+11” policy, which called for three days of isolation and 11 days of self-health management for pilots and flight crew, DPP caucus secretary-general Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) told a briefing at the legislature in Taipei.
“Other airline companies in Taiwan also faced the same quarantine and prevention measures, but did not have problems,” Lo said.
The quarantine rules were based on “rolling corrections,” leaving room to adjust as the situation changed, he said.
The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) had earlier imposed a “5+9” policy — five days of isolation and nine days of self-health management, along with testing for COVID-19, Lo said.
Airlines asked for a less-strict “3+11” policy, which led to breaches of the rules and the outbreak of infections, he said.
The CECC’s plan was for the new “3+11” to become a strengthened quarantine policy, compared with last year, Lo said, adding that it was the same for all other Taiwanese airlines.
CAL and Novotel, where pilots spent their isolation periods, bear a greater portion of the responsibility for cluster infections that preceded the nationwide outbreak, Lo said.
“CAL and Novotel had lots of problems executing the 3+11 policy,” Lo said.
“They created loopholes in the rules, which policy experts will have to assess. The lapses created problems for air flight safety, pandemic mitigation and other issues,” he added.
Separately, Control Yuan members Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊) and Pasuya Poiconu said in a press release that there might be a probe into the “3+11” policy.
“The CECC loosened COVID-19 quarantine measures for pilots and flight crew of Taiwan’s airline companies,” the release said. “It seems that the decisionmaking process did not fully consider every aspect of the situation, so a probe is to be conducted into the process.”
The DPP respects the authority of the Control Yuan to conduct such an investigation, Lo said.
“People in Taiwan questioned the 3+11 policy,” former New Power Party chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said in a public message.
“Finally, today, the Control Yuan has announced that it is to investigate the matter,” he added.
“We agree with this move so that the truth of what happened will be known,” Huang said. “Moreover, DPP caucus members have pointed out CAL’s and Novotel’s greater legal responsibility.”
“The repercussions of the companies’ actions has caused tremendous harm to society. I want to ask CAL chairman Hsieh Shih-chien (謝世謙) how much of the responsibility he has accepted,” he said.
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