Travelers from Bangladesh, Brazil and Peru are no longer required to quarantine at a government center, and from Saturday can choose to quarantine at hotels, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.
The three nations are no longer considered “key high-risk countries,” as their COVID-19 case numbers have continued to fall, the CECC said, adding that no travelers from these countries have been confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 in the past two months.
The revised classification would allow travelers from the three countries to choose where they stay during their mandatory 14-day quarantine, although they would be required to pay for their accommodation.
Photo courtesy of the Central Epidemic Command Center
Taiwan requires travelers who have been to or transited through “key high-risk countries” in the 14 days before entering Taiwan to quarantine at a government-designated facility.
The list includes India, Indonesia, Israel, Myanmar and the UK.
Travelers from other countries can also stay at a government facility, but must pay NT$2,000 per night, or at an authorized quarantine hotel.
All travelers must undergo three COVID-19 tests: two polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests at the beginning and end of the quarantine period, and an antigen rapid test between the 10th and 12th day of their quarantine, the CECC said.
The CECC yesterday reported no locally transmitted COVID-19 infections or deaths, adding that it planned to test a New Taipei City worker again today after previous tests were inconclusive.
Hon Hai Precision Industry on Wednesday said that an engineer at its Foxconn Interconnect Technology subsidiary in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城), had tested positive for COVID-19 in a rapid saliva test.
The employee, a woman in her 20s who had not received a COVID-19 vaccine, later tested positive in a PCR test performed at a hospital, the company said, adding that health authorities had arranged for the worker to be isolated.
Six close contacts of the employee were also in isolation, the company added.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the CECC’s spokesman, said that the worker tested negative in a traditional nucleic acid test.
The employee’s sample was yesterday delivered to a CDC lab in Taipei, which found that only a single gene was positive, with a cycle threshold value in the 30s and a negative serum antibody test result, he said.
The CECC would likely test the woman again today, he said, adding that it would wait for the result before declaring it a local case.
The CECC yesterday reported nine imported cases: two from Indonesia, two from Vietnam, and one each from Austria, India, Kenya, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates.
None had received two or more COVID-19 vaccines, it said, adding that six of them had been confirmed with the virus or tested positive for COVID-19 in the past.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS