The level 2 COVID-19 alert is to be extended until Dec. 13, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) announced yesterday, as it advised people in six high-risk groups to receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot.
It also recommended that adolescents aged 12 to 17 who had a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine receive a second shot.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that the nationwide level 2 alert would remain in place for two more weeks from today.
Photo: Tsai Shu-yuan, Taipei Times
Chen said that during New Year’s events eating and drinking might be allowed in designated areas, while only drinking water would be allowed elsewhere, and revelers would be prohibited from removing their mask to take photographs.
Assigned seating would be mandatory for all indoor events, which must implement contact registration and arrange fixed entrances, where attendees’ temperatures can be taken and hands disinfected, he said.
“Many local government heads have expressed concern over the new emerging Omicron variant [of SARS-CoV-2] in the past two days. As the COVID-19 situation can change rapidly, the restrictions and rules for events would be under rolling review,” he said.
Regarding vaccinations, Chen said that the ministry’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Sunday recommended that fully vaccinated people in six high-risk groups receive a third dose six months or more after their second shot.
The groups include people aged 65 or older, long-term care facility residents and workers, healthcare workers, disease prevention personnel, frontline workers at higher risk of infection and people in the ninth priority group for vaccination.
“Other people, who are 18 years old or older, can evaluate their own risk of infection and vaccination willingness, and receive a booster shot after being assessed by a doctor,” Chen said.
While the center recommends that people receive a dose of the same brand of vaccine as their previous shots, they can choose a dose of a different brand, he said.
Plans for administering the booster shots are still being discussed, but they would be offered after New Year’s Day at the earliest, he added.
The committee also recommended that adolescents aged 12 to 17 who received a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and did not experience serious side effects receive a second dose at least 12 weeks apart.
Experts at the meeting referenced COVID-19 case data, the policies for administering mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — such as the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — and cases of myocarditis and pericarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination among adolescents in other countries, as well as individual cases in Taiwan, he said.
The committee said that while myocarditis and pericarditis following mRNA vaccination might be associated with vaccines, with new COVID-19 variants spreading worldwide and the Lunar New Year holiday approaching, it suggested that adolescents receive a second vaccine dose to reduce the risk of imported cases causing local outbreaks.
Chen said the CECC and local health departments would begin planning for campus vaccination, and because schools need time to collect parental consent forms, on-campus vaccinations would likely start from the middle of next month.
He said that 263,101 vaccine doses were administered over the weekend, bringing the nation’s first-dose vaccination rate to 77.7 percent and the full vaccination rate to 55.45 percent.
Citing data from Singapore gathered from May 1 to Oct. 31, Chen said that the death rate of people aged 80 or older was 22 percent among the unvaccinated, 12 percent among the partially vaccinated and 2.5 percent among the fully vaccinated.
The proportion of people who were critically ill or were being closely monitored in intensive care units in the same group was 46 percent among the unvaccinated and 12 percent among the fully vaccinated, he added.
“We now have sufficient supplies of vaccine doses, and vaccines have become accessible to everyone, so we urge people to be vaccinated as soon as possible,” he said, adding that they should not wait for experts to assess the impacts of the Omicron variant.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS