The government should downgrade COVID-19 from a category 5 to a category 4 communicable disease to reduce business risks borne by overseas travel operators, travel agents said yesterday.
While the Central Epidemic Command Center has eased quarantine requirements and waived mandatory polymerase reaction chain tests for citizens and residents returning to Taiwan, and the Tourism Bureau is expected to soon lift the ban on outbound and inbound tours, travel agents said they are not too eager to organize overseas tours, as Japan, South Korea and other countries that have opened their borders have reported a resurgence of COVID-19 cases caused by the highly contagious Omicron BA.5 subvariant of SARS-CoV-2.
Return trips could be disrupted if the tour guide or tour member tested positive for COVID-19, which would mean they would have to spend a few more days abroad, they said.
Travelers still need to undergo three days of quarantine and four days of self-initiated disease prevention upon their return, they added.
Travel Agent Association vice chairman Chang Yung-chen (張永成) told the Taipei Times that downgrading COVID-19 from a category 5 to a category 4 communicable disease is the solution to reducing the risks faced by overseas tour operators.
“Downgrading the disease would make it no different from a cold, and those contracting the virus need not be quarantined anymore,” Chang said. “I believe this is what the government should do when COVID-19 cases at home and abroad show signs of improvement. Otherwise, we simply cannot keep up with all potential risks involved in organizing overseas tours.”
In other news, travel agents have asked the Tourism Bureau to intervene, as many insurance companies have stopped offering overseas medical insurance to travelers.
Travel Quality Assurance Association chairman Louis Hsu (許禓哲) told reporters at a media luncheon on Tuesday that almost all insurance firms have stopped offering such products after having to pay about NT$41 billion (US$1.37 billion) in compensation for COVID-19 policies.
“We hope the Tourism Bureau can help by talking to insurance companies. Otherwise, who is going to pay for the medical expenses of tourists even after they are allowed to join overseas tours,” Hsu said.
Insurance firms can offer insurance plans similar to those offered to tourists joining tours to Palau, with which Taiwan signed a quarantine-free travel corridor agreement last year, he said, adding that the plan covered additional expenses incurred after contracting the virus.
Chang said that Taiwan should learn from the Japanese government by making travel health insurance available to tourists.
“We will continue to communicate with insurance firms and the Non-Life Insurance Association about this matter to protect travelers,” the bureau said.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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