President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is in good health and working from home, as she follows Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) guidance to isolate until Thursday, after a person she had lunch with tested positive for COVID-19, Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang (張惇涵) said yesterday.
Tsai on Friday took a rapid antigen and a polymerase chain reaction test for the virus, and tested negative in both, Chang said.
One of Tsai’s relatives with whom she had lunch at the presidential residence on Monday was later confirmed to have COVID-19, he said.
The family gathering was held with partitions to separate participants, and Tsai was about 3m from the infected person, he said.
CECC guidance requires close contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases to undergo home isolation for 10 days, followed by seven-days of self-health management, in an effort to ensure contacts limit their interactions with others.
Chang said Tsai was in good health and made telephone calls with officials from 8am to keep track of government affairs.
A plan to receive visitors from the Swedish-Taiwanese Parliamentarian Association and European Parliament at the Presidential Office on Tuesday would be rearranged after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reviews possible alternatives with the delegation, Chang said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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