The New Power Party (NPP) caucus yesterday called on the government to shorten border quarantine in favor of measures emphasizing regular testing and vaccination to bring the nation in line with the rest of the world.
The party’s news conference yesterday was held just before the Central Epidemic Command Center announced that mandatory quarantine for inbound travelers would next week be shortened from 10 days to seven days, while revising its regulations to allow clinics to perform polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.
As the world is gradually opening up and preparing to live with the virus, Taiwan should not fall behind as it is heavily reliant on international trade, NPP Legislator Claire Wang (王婉諭) said.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Taiwan is facing a serious COVID-19 outbreak, as are many other nations, but the quarantine policy is not in line with international norms, she said.
Tight quarantine rules imposed on inbound travelers have to be changed as they draw on considerable resources and conflict with calls to open the border, she added.
Wang suggested that the center gradually relax border controls by conducting regular testing and using the number of vaccines a traveler has received to determine the quarantine period.
In addition, the center should conduct DNA sequencing on domestic COVID-19 cases to monitor potential new variants of SARS-CoV-2, she said.
Following panic buying of rapid test kits, Wang said that the center could launch a preorder system like the one used last year for purchasing masks to ease the burden on pharmacies and distribute the kits more efficiently to those in need, such as close contacts and high-risk groups.
NPP Legislator Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said that PCR tests should be conducted in a designated area in hospitals or in communities to avoid disrupting emergency rooms.
The government should increase the number of children’s wards and the capacity of emergency treatment for children, fully implement home isolation policies to prevent children from being infected and temporarily relax rules to allow trained medical personnel to collect specimens for testing, Chen said.
NPP caucus whip Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) cited Article 46 of the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法) as stipulating that “in principle, specimens of communicable diseases shall be collected by physicians; specimens from contacts of patients shall be collected by physicians or other medical personnel.”
In hospitals, doctors have been overwhelmed by the number of PCR tests they have to conduct and are unable to perform other tasks, so the government should consider allowing other medical personnel to share the workload, Chiu said.
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