Several ambulances are parked outside a factory in Taichung’s Dali District (大里), but the neighborhood is quiet without any sense of emergency.
Instead, a man wearing glasses is overseeing the installation of an airtight isolation booth in an ambulance’s patient compartment.
The man, Johnson Yang (楊冠威), is an entrepreneur and head of Taichung-based SYT Technology Co, which produces items made of plastic and other materials.
Photo: CNA
He designed a booth made of transparent acrylic and other materials after the Taichung City Fire Bureau, which also provides emergency medical services, came to him for help last month.
With COVID-19 cases on the rise, emergency responders were putting their lives at risk by transporting people infected with the virus.
Without any way to isolate patients in its ambulances, the bureau was relying on rather crude methods to keep its emergency responders safe, he said.
It used curing tape to try to seal off the vehicle’s driver compartment, while medical staff riding in the patient compartment felt less protected, even with a mask and other personal protective equipment. The bureau also needed about two hours to disinfect its ambulances after transporting each patient.
To address these problems, Yang designed an isolation booth that separates a person suspected of having COVID-19 from the paramedics, but which would still allow them to monitor the patient’s condition.
He said that finding a workable solution was much more challenging than he had imagined.
It took four days for Yang to develop a prototype for the booth and run tests to make sure it worked. Customization was needed because ambulances’ interiors vary, Yang said.
Smoke was pumped into the booth to see if there were any leaks and make sure that viruses could not escape, he said.
The booths not only prevent viruses from spreading in an ambulance, but also make disinfecting the vehicle much easier, he said.
With the isolation booth installed in the ambulance, it now takes Fire Bureau staff only about 10 minutes to disinfect the booth after each trip, he said.
However, people can only sit in the booth, so it is not suitable for people who need to lie down on a cot and be attended to by medical staff.
Still, the booths can be useful, and Yang has so far built nearly 20 of them, all free of charge, for ambulances managed by the fire bureaus of Taichung, as well as Miaoli and Nantou counties.
Yang, who has been a member of Taichung’s Volunteer Fire Brigade for a decade, said he wanted to contribute to the country’s disease prevention efforts.
He said he has volunteered less in the past few years because of his busy work schedule, but his passion for helping firefighters and paramedics has not faded, as can be seen by the row of miniature ambulance models displayed in his office.
“People who are involved in fire bureau services are like a family,” he said.
Yang did not disclose how much it cost to build an isolation booth, but said he had received some donations from friends and strangers who appreciated his work.
The donations have “made my hard work worthwhile and warmed my heart,” Yang said, adding that he hopes Taiwan will soon overcome the COVID-19 challenge with everyone helping in any way they can.
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
RSS