Taipei and New Taipei City yesterday released a list of places visited by two people recently confirmed to have contracted COVID-19, to alert people to areas where they could possibly have been exposed to the virus.
Taipei focused on the movements of a disease control worker at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, a woman in her 40s who conducted saliva tests on inbound travelers and screened them for fever.
She was confirmed to have COVID-19 on Sunday after 6,346 airport staff were tested on Friday and Saturday, the Central Epidemic Command Center said.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Department of Environmental Protection
The woman took the Taipei MRT system between Taipei Main Station and Mingde Station on the Red Line at different hours in the morning and evening from Tuesday to Saturday last week, the Taipei Department of Health said.
On Thursday last week, she visited a 7-Eleven convenience store on Mingde Road in Beitou District (北投) from 12:32am to 12:35am.
She visited a Kuang Nan (Xuchang Branch) wholesale store and a Daiso shopping center on Xuchang Street the following afternoon from 4:27pm to 4:54pm.
That same evening, she visited the Carrefour supermarket in Tianmu (天母), before heading to a FamilyMart convenience store on Mingde Road.
The woman has since been placed in a government-run quarantine center in Taipei, the department said.
Also yesterday, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said it had received confirmation on Sunday that a person with COVID-19 recently visited the Taipei Children’s Amusement Park, which it manages and maintains.
The park has been thoroughly disinfected, but its indoor food court has been temporarily closed for three days starting yesterday as a precaution, the TRTC said.
Those who might have come into contact with the person, determined using smartphone tracking systems, have been notified to get tested for COVID-19, while some of the park workers have been ordered to follow self-health management protocols, the company said.
New Taipei City authorities later yesterday identified the woman as a female nurse who works at Far Eastern Memorial Hospital in Banciao District (板橋).
The woman, who is in her 30s, was on Saturday confirmed to have COVID-19 after coming down with a cough.
Among the places she visited was the Mega City department store in Banciao, the New Taipei City Department of Health said.
The department store is being disinfected after it learned that the nurse recently visited one of its restaurants — Haidilao Hot Pot, the department said.
She also visited other places in and around Taipei and New Taipei City, including the Far Eastern Department Store and the Lihpao Hi-Mall in Banciao, and the National Taiwan Science Education Center in Shilin District (士林).
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
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
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
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
RSS