Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) yesterday criticized the city government after a market vendor tested positive for COVID-19 after receiving a jab against the virus, forcing 73 people at the vaccination site into isolation.
Responding to an outbreak linked to Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Co markets, the city set up rapid testing stations and announced plans to vaccinate everyone associated with the company’s wholesale markets.
Priority was given to those who tested negative through rapid screening.
Photo: CNA
Taipei Market Administration Office Director Chen Ting-hui (陳庭輝) said that the city on June 9, 11 and 18 sent a team to Huannan Market (環南市場) in Wanhua District (萬華) to test all personnel.
However, the vendor did not undergo mandatory testing before getting vaccinated, despite repeated notifications, Chen said.
Only later did they go to a rapid testing station in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋), where they tested positive, Chen said.
To get the vaccine, the vendor rode in a charter bus and waited in line with other people, Chen said, adding that health officials have traced 73 contacts.
The other vendors are angry that they have been listed as contacts and ordered to isolate because they obeyed orders to get inoculated, Wu said, adding that one vendor estimated that the case must have encountered 200 to 300 people during the process.
The charter bus driver did not keep track of the passengers and everyone had to wait for at least half an hour, she said, adding: “Why were those people not listed as contacts?”
Poor planning by the Taipei City Government has exposed people to danger when they were simply following instructions, Wu said.
The city must more carefully consider all supporting measures beforehand, or it might create even more problems, she said.
In an article on Voicettank, Taiwan Thinktank’s opinion Web site, Phil Smith, a former general manager of Reuters News North Asia who lives in New Taipei City, also criticized Taipei officials, writing that they had allowed partisan politics to interfere with the city’s pandemic response.
The Chinese-language article published on June 18 titled: “Are Taiwan’s opposition camps the men in a pub talking politics,” criticized the “breathtaking arrogance” of Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), who on Facebook said that she had refused calls from Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中).
“This amounts to dereliction of duty and shows gross disregard for the people of Taipei, who she is supposed to protect and serve,” Smith wrote.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) blames the city’s failures on the central government while crediting other cities’ relative success to “insider trading,” he wrote.
Taipei City Government spokeswoman Chen Chih-han (陳智菡) said that the city has made many concrete suggestions that have not always been adopted.
For example, Taipei was the first to set up quarantine hotels and specialized taxis, she said.
It also voiced concern to the Executive Yuan when the Central Epidemic Command Center in August last year allowed people entering the country to quarantine at regular hotels, she said.
Ko also suggested that flight personnel be subject to the same quarantine rules as ordinary travelers and be prioritized for vaccines, Chen Chih-han said.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS