Schools would open for the new semester on Sept. 1 as long as the nation’s COVID-19 alert remains at level 2 over the coming weeks, most local governments said yesterday.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Tsai Ping-kun (蔡炳坤) said that students would be required to wear masks, and must have dividers to separate them when eating.
No outdoor sports would be permitted, in line with the Central Epidemic Command Center’s (CECC) recommendations, he said.
Photo courtesy of the Tainan Bureau of Education
For music classes, teachers would only provide instruction and demonstrations, as students would not be permitted to remove their masks to perform, he added.
If a student is diagnosed with COVID-19, their class would be suspended, Tsai said of the city government’s tentatively planned measures to handle infections, adding that if two were infected, then the school would close.
If one-third of schools within a district are shut down due to COVID-19, all schools within the district would close, he added.
New Taipei City Education Department Commissioner Chang Ming-wen (張明文) said that schools in the city would be open under alert levels 1 and 2, adding that if the alert is raised to level 3, but there are no confirmed cases within a district, then schools in that district would remain open.
School would close for three days if there is one confirmed case reported, and 14 days if there are two COVID-19 cases, he said.
Taichung officials also said that students in the city would begin the new semester on Sept. 1, adding that the city has 93 percent vaccine coverage for its high-school and elementary-school teachers.
Tainan officials said that although they are in principle preparing to open schools on Sept. 1, they would adhere to the CECC’s guidelines for students at high-school level and below.
Additional reporting by Liu Wan-chunand Su Meng-chuan
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
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS