The Singaporean Ministry of Health on Thursday announced that travelers from Taiwan would no longer need to isolate at home if they test negative for COVID-19 upon arrival, as the number of domestic cases in Taiwan has fallen over the past few weeks.
The ministry said in a statement that travelers who have been in Taiwan for at least 21 days before departing for Singapore would not have to isolate for 14 days if they test negative for COVID-19 in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) upon arrival.
The statement was a revision of Singapore’s border control regulations imposed on May 16, which required 14-day home isolation for travelers from Taiwan, amid a spike in COVID-19 cases in Taiwan.
Singapore implemented the regulation one day after Taiwan reported 180 new domestic cases and raised the COVID-19 alert to level 3 for Taipei and New Taipei City, the two infection hot spots at the time.
The ministry said that its Multi-Ministry Task Force had been closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation worldwide.
“As the situation in Taiwan has improved, we will allow travelers from Taiwan to undergo a COVID-19 PCR test upon arrival, and to go about their activities in Singapore if the PCR test result is negative,” the ministry said.
The order also includes short-term visitors from Taiwan, who can also apply for an air travel pass for entry into Singapore starting on Thursday next week, it said.
Taiwan lowered its COVID-19 alert to level 2 on Tuesday last week, as the number of indigenous cases continued to fall.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000
RSS