The squid fishing boat Win Far Yang No. 1 docked at the Cienjhen Fishing Port (前鎮碼頭) in Kaohsiung at about 8am yesterday and the crew members were placed in quarantine in line with the Fisheries Agency’s regulations.
The 52 crew members — four Taiwanese and 48 foreigners — were the first group of more than 4,000 fishers expected to return home to Kaohsiung in the coming weeks at the end of the far-sea fishing season.
Another five distant-water fishing vessels with about 250 crew members were scheduled to dock in Kaohsiung later yesterday, and the city government has dispatched health officials and police to help them with the entry process.
Most of the returning boats are distant-water fishing vessels that catch squid and typically return to Taiwan between June and August, the city’s Marine Bureau said.
The agency’s entry rules for distant-water fishers require that crew members who had contact with people not on their vessel during their journey — such as by docking at foreign ports, transferring cargo to other ships, undergoing crew changes or being inspected at sea — quarantine for 14 days upon returning to Taiwan.
There are two ways for them to quarantine: The whole crew can stay on their vessel for 14 days and then receive a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for COVID-19 before being released, or the crew members can stay at quarantine hotels or at home, and would not be required to test.
Those who quarantine at hotels are entitled to a NT$1,500 per day.
Crew members on ships that did not have contact with other vessels are not required to quarantine, but they receive a rapid COVID-19 screening test upon docking in Taiwan. If all of the results are negative, they must practice self-health management for 14 days, which entails wearing a mask at all times when outside of their home and checking their temperature twice per day.
Crew members who have positive screening test results are placed in quarantine while a PCR test is processed and the rest of the crew stays on the ship.
If the PCR test result is positive, the infected crew member is hospitalized, while the rest of the crew members are placed in quarantine on land for 14 days.
If the PCR test result is negative, all of the crew must practice self-health management for 14 days.
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