The Taipei City Government has no plans for schools to postpone the spring semester, and it is planning to have elementary schools submit lists of their teachers for COVID-19 vaccination, Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) said yesterday.
Huang made the remarks at the reopening of the Guanghua Digital Plaza (光華數位新天地) market.
She said that the local COVID-19 situation remains stable and under control, and there is no need for schools to postpone the start of the semester this month.
Photo: CNA
However, the city government is planning to require teachers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to protect students who cannot receive such vaccines based on their ages, she said.
Asked about Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) remark on Friday that the city government would consider easing COVID-19 restrictions later this month, Huang said restrictions should be modified given that the booster dose rate in Taipei has reached over 20 percent.
The incubation period of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is shorter, so the mandatory 14-day quarantine for inbound travelers should also be reviewed, she said.
The city government would observe COVID-19 local transmissions for about two weeks after the Lunar New Year holiday, which ends tomorrow, and that easing restrictions would be discussed if the situation in Taipei remains stable, she said.
“The purpose of getting vaccinated is for people to return to their normal lives, so if we continue to enforce restrictions after administering so many vaccines, then what is the point of getting vaccinated?” she said.
The Taipei City Government on Friday reopened its online COVID-19 vaccination booking system, offering 68,387 booster doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but only 17,170 appointments were filled as of 10am yesterday.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is just as effective as Moderna’s, so people should not wait for the Moderna vaccine to become available, she said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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