People with different levels of disabilities are at a high risk of being infected with COVID-19, but they have been left out of the priority list for vaccination, advocates said yesterday, urging health authorities to do something about it.
Taiwan has more than 1.2 million people with physical or mental disabilities, but most of them are not eligible for a COVID-19 jab under groups 5 and 9 of the Central Epidemic Command Center’s (CECC) vaccine priority list, Lin Chin-hsing (林進興), chairman of the Taoyuan-based Spinal Cord Injury Development Center, told an online news conference organized by Taiwan People’s Party legislators Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶) and Ann Kao (高虹安).
Group 5 refers to residents and caregivers at long-term care facilities or disability service centers, while Group 9 covers people aged 19 to 64 who are seriously injured, have a rare disease or at high risk of contracting a serious illness.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan People’s Party
“Right now most people with physical or mental disabilities are not included in these [two groups], and they have to wait for their age group to get inoculated. They are at a high risk of infection, but many still have to go out to work, so they are tormented by the current situation,” Lin said.
Spinal Cord Injury Federation chairman Chen Shan-hsiu (陳善修) said he had sent the Ministry of Health and Welfare a letter on June 22 asking for people with serious disabilities who need home care, as well as their primary caregiver and family members, to be included in the priority list.
“However, we have yet to receive a response,” he said. “We are in dire need of protection, but we are being ignored by the central authorities.”
Questioning the criteria for inclusion on the priority list, the League for Persons with Disabilities, ROC-Taiwan, chairman Liu Ching-chung (劉金鐘) asked if fundamental human rights and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health were taken into consideration.
“The list is unfair,” he said, calling for a review of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and for the CECC to consult experts in each field before making a decision.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the