he Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday added Egypt, Malawi, Mozambique and Nigeria to its list of “key high-infection risk” countries for COVID-19.
In light of the risk posed by the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, which was first detected in southern Africa and designated a “variant of concern” by the WHO last week, the CECC on Friday listed six southern African countries — South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho and Eswatini — as key high-risk countries.
People who have traveled to the 10 countries, including transit passengers and airline crew, in the 14 days before arriving in Taiwan, must stay in a government centralized quarantine facility for 14 days after arrival.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said quarantine fees would be covered by the government, as the travelers have no other quarantine choices under the policy.
Chen said no new local COVID-19 infections were reported yesterday, marking the 25th consecutive day of no new local cases, but added that eight imported cases were confirmed.
The imported cases are seven men and a woman, who arrived from Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the US.
They include one Taiwan-based pilot who tested positive during quarantine, said Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy chief of the CECC’s medical response division.
The pilot returned to Taiwan from the US on Tuesday last week and reported having had an itchy throat on Sunday. His polymerase chain reaction test had a cycle threshold value of 28.5.
The pilot flew twice to the US in the 14 days before the onset of symptoms, Lo said, adding that he has received two doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, so he is considered a vaccine breakthrough infection.
Six vaccine breakthrough infections have been reported among airline crew members since May, but as they are sporadic cases, the center does not plan to tighten the quarantine measures for Taiwan-based airline crew members at this time, Chen said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching