Swimming pools, community colleges and learning centers for senior citizens are among a list of venues that are reopening today under an extended level 2 COVID-19 alert period, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday, as it reported four locally transmitted COVID-19 infections and four deaths.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, on Friday announced that the level 2 alert would be extended for two weeks until Aug. 23, but that the CECC would take into consideration proposals on easing restrictions for some businesses and discuss them with concerned authorities.
Community daycare facilities, parent-child play centers, board game venues and vocational training centers are also resuming operations today, with strict instructions to follow disease control measures.
Photo: CNA
However, facilities that are to remain closed include study centers, as well as karaoke halls, discos, hostess bars, nightclub, pubs, MTVs, KTVs, tourist or audio-video parlors, gaming arcades, Internet cafes, mahjong clubs and similar venues.
As for sales of hot food in convenience stores, such as tea eggs and oden (關東煮), which many people have inquired about, Chen said that they would be allowed if the food products are pre-packaged or if store clerks can serve them to customers, instead of allowing customers to use tongs to choose the food themselves.
Swimming pools are reopening, but shower facilities, children’s splash pools, hot or cold springs, spas and saunas must remain closed, the CECC said.
Photo: Taipei Times
The general restrictions for a level 2 alert, such as wearing a mask at all times (except when eating) when outside the home, maintaining a social distance, contact information registration, and limiting the maximum number of people in gatherings to 50 people indoors and 100 people outdoors, remain the same, it added.
Deputy Minister of the Interior Chen Tsung-yen (陳宗彥), the CECC’s deputy head, said that when the alert level was lowered from 3 to 2 on July 27, national parks, national scenic areas and national forest recreation areas were reopened to the public, except for protected ecological areas within national parks, natural reserves and wildlife refuges in national forest recreation areas, but starting today these would also reopen.
That means some mountain camping sites will be open to the public, but campers must comply with the rule of one person per tent or only family members who live together can stay in the same tent, he said.
Of the four local COVID-19 cases reported yesterday, one tested positive during isolation, and contact tracing is being conducted to identify the sources of infection of the other three, the CECC said.
The four cases are males aged 30 to 60 — two from Taipei and one each from New Taipei City and Kaohsiung, Chen said.
The center also reported four imported cases — three from Malaysia and one from the US.
The four peoople who died of COVID-19 had underlying health conditions, said Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy chief of the CECC’s medical response division.
One of them is a woman in her 40s who had been hospitalized for stage 4 liver cancer since May 16, he said, adding that she was exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 case in the hospital, and tested positive for the disease on June 2.
The woman was asymptomatic, but later developed COVID-19-related symptoms, including pneumonia and respiratory failure, and died on Sunday, Lo said.
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