The Straits Exchange Foundation yesterday announced a third set of flights to evacuate 440 Taiwanese from China’s Hubei Province due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The flights, operated by China Airlines Ltd (中華航空) according to its normal schedule, are on Sunday and Monday next week.
They are to depart Shanghai Pudong International Airport at 7:50pm and arrive at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 9:50pm, the foundation said.
Photo: CNA
China Airlines is to dispatch two Boeing 777.
The aircraft has a capacity of 358 passengers, but each would only carry 220 to ensure a proper distance is maintained between those onboard, it said.
Within hours of the foundation starting to accept requests to book seats on the two flights, they had been overbooked, Deputy Minister of the Interior Chen Tsung-yen (陳宗彥) said.
As in the two previous rounds of evacuations — which used charter flights — all passengers would be required to wear a mask and protective clothing, he said.
Prior to boarding, passengers would have their temperature checked by medical personnel, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) told a news conference at the Executive Yuan in Taipei.
After arriving in Taiwan, they would be sent to a designated quarantine facility for 14 days and tested for COVID-19 within 48 hours, he said.
As there are at least 1,000 Taiwanese stranded in Hubei, the Ministry of the Interior would decide whether to employ more regular flights to repatriate them after reviewing the efficacy of the model, Chen said.
Taiwanese who have been in Hubei since the pandemic started would not be allowed to book flights home on their own, he said.
Asked whether the Chinese spouses and children of Taiwanese would be excluded from the flights as they were in the previous evacuations, Chen said that had not yet been decided.
Chen said that with the exception of Wuhan, the lockdown of Hubei Province has been lifted, but he did not give any recommendations on how people in the province should travel to Shanghai to take the flights.
The upcoming flights are the result of intensive discussions, presided over by Vice Premier Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), on Tuesday and Wednesday between officials from the foundation, the CDC, the Mainland Affairs Council, the National Security Council and the Civil Aeronautics Administration, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said.
Asked whether Taiwan would send direct flights to Wuhan, the original epicenter of the outbreak, to evacuate Taiwanese, Kolas said that the government would determine which model would best accomplish its overarching goal of meeting the high disease-prevention standards of the “Taiwan model,” as well as which method is most efficient.
The foundation and the Mainland Affairs Council would continue negotiating with Chinese authorities over any future flights, she added.
Additional reporting by Chung Li-hua
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS