The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported 26,095 new local COVID-19 cases, an increase of 13.9 percent from last week, and predicted that total caseloads this week could rise by about 10 percent.
New Taipei City had the most cases at 5,258, followed by Taipei with 3,189, Taichung with 3,038, Taoyuan with 2,673, Kaohsiung with 2,179, Tainan with 1,650 and Changhua County with 1,132, CECC data showed.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division, reported 28 moderate-to-severe cases, which is the lowest daily number since May 3.
Photo: Lo Pei-te, Taipei Times
Among the 16 deceased reported yesterday, aged 50 to 90, nine had not received a booster vaccine and all had chronic illnesses, he said.
Lo also provided a weekly update on COVID-19 infections in residential care facilities, saying that positivity rates dropped further to 0.5 percent among staff and 0.6 percent among residents last week.
Meanwhile, the Control Yuan yesterday published its investigation report on the CECC’s “3+11” quarantine policy decision procedure.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has blamed the “3+11” quarantine policy — three days of home quarantine, followed by 11 days of self-health management for Taiwan-based airline crewmembers imposed in April last year — as the main reason for the local COVID-19 outbreak in May last year, and has questioned the CECC’s statement that it did not take minutes of the meeting that led to the decision.
The Control Yuan report said that due process was followed, with the head of the CECC listening to the responsible divisions’ reports on the issue and making a decision, announcing the policy at a news conference and issuing a press release.
There are no clear regulations stipulating that meeting minutes must be taken and published, but as it concerns the public’s right to health and knowledge, the Ministry of Health and Welfare must amend related regulations, it said, adding that the center did not provide a thorough public explanation of how the policy was made — an area that needs improving.
CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) later yesterday said that the “3+11” policy had been implemented since 2020, and it was only tightened to “7+7” during the autumn-winter COVID-19 prevention program launched in December that year.
As the management of airline crew in hotels in other countries greatly improved, such as adding surveillance cameras in hotel hallways and providing one-time hotel room cards, and violations of COVID-19 rules dropped, the quarantine requirement was eased to “5+9,” the CECC spokesman said.
Another review of airline crew management in April last year showed that there were no violations and COVID-19 tests of more than 9,000 crew members in March showed that the vast majority were negative, so the rule was eased to “3+11” on April 15, Chuang said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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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