Taipei’s planned COVID-19 pass would be launched through the TaipeiPass (台北通) app and should be able to interface with the digital vaccination certificate issued by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), Taipei Deputy Mayor Tsai Ping-kun (蔡炳坤) said yesterday.
Taipei and New Taipei City are considering introducing a COVID-19 pass as the nation steps up efforts to increase the booster shot coverage rate, which was 6.95 percent as of yesterday.
“The mayor [Ko Wen-je (柯文哲)] made it clear in the meeting this morning that our TaipeiPass app is ready to launch the COVID-19 pass, but the key is that the pass must be able to interface with the CECC’s digital vaccination certificate,” Tsai said, adding that the city would by Thursday have a clearer direction regarding how it should be carried out.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
About 57 percent of quarantine hotel personnel and 58 percent of disease prevention bus drivers have received booster shots, Tsai said, adding that other sectors are making lists of personnel who should receive boosters.
Starting at 10am today, people can make reservations for booster shots at clinics in Taipei via the CECC’s 1922.gov.tw platform, he added.
In related news, the Chientan Youth Activity Center is now being used for COVID-19 cases with mild or no symptoms.
Tour guides taking lessons in a second foreign language at the center are to be trained in a different venue from today.
The center said in an online statement that it has since March 2020 worked with the Taipei City Government to become a quarantine facility for Taiwanese returning from overseas.
It said that its operations at conference halls and dining areas would not be affected.
The Tourist Guides Associations said that the training is taking place in a different venue from the one with quarantine facilities, adding that there should be no risk of cross infection.
Ninety-seven tour guides are undergoing training, it added.
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