Starting today, people can download a Digital COVID-19 Certificate, with the government now requiring people at night clubs, karaoke bars and other businesses in “eight major special establishment categories” to be fully vaccinated and present a vaccination certificate.
The eight categories include dance venues, massage parlors, hostess bars and saunas.
Customers and service personnel at the venues have a higher risk of contracting COVID-19, as they can neither avoid contact with people nor strictly observe distancing guidelines, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said.
Photo courtesy of Central Epidemic Command Center
As such, both groups are required to be fully vaccinated, meaning that they must have had at least a second dose of an approved COVID-19 vaccine more than 14 days earlier, the CECC said.
When accessing these facilities, people should present a valid vaccination certificate, and businesses should deny entry to those who do not produce one, it said.
Service personnel who are not fully vaccinated must test negative each week, it said.
Tseng Pi-yun (曾碧雲), a senior specialist at the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Department of Commerce, told the CECC’s daily media briefing that management at such facilities would accept a paper vaccination certificate, also known as the “Yellow Card,” or a Digital COVID-19 Certificate.
People can also show their vaccination record on the National Health Insurance Express app, Tseng said.
Prior to the announcement, the CECC had enforced a similar policy for visitors, caregivers, patients and healthcare providers at hospitals and nursing homes, although they can provide a negative COVID-19 test instead.
Asked if such policy would one day apply to restaurants, movie theaters and other venues, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the private sector and local governments are welcome to enforce their own policies or require the certificate as they see fit.
With New Taipei City soon to bar entry to visitors at elementary schools, kindergartens and childcare facilities without a COVID-19 certificate to protect students under the age of 12, who are not eligible for COVID-19 vaccination, Chen said that “the CECC would not object to the city government’s policy.”
Restaurateurs can enforce such a policy, provided that they do so in ways that do not constitute collective action, he said.
Last year, the CECC launched a platform where people planning to travel overseas can apply for a digital vaccination certificate.
A new version of the platform — at dvc.mohw.gov.tw/maintenance-dcc — is to be launched at 8am today, the center said, adding that people can get a “green” pass with if they are fully vaccinated, have tested negative or have recovered from COVID-19.
The old platform asked people to register with their passport number, but the new platform requires household registration, a national ID and national health insurance documents, it said.
The system complies with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and can be used to verify vaccination status and polymerase chain reaction test results issued by 60 countries, the CECC said.
A platform-issued certificate — which would be converted into a QR code — can be printed or be stored in apps that require name registration, it said.
“Apps that comply with the EU’s principles of handling personal data — minimum disclosure, right to data portability and right to forget — can link to the platform with the CECC’s permission,” Chen said after Taipei officials asked whether the city’s TaipeiPass could be used with the platform.
Upon presentation at a business, the certificates would return one of three results: green — from being fully vaccinated, testing negative or having recovered from an infection — meaning “pass”; red, meaning “not passed”; or yellow, meaning “to be determined,” the CECC said.
The US Department of State yesterday criticized Beijing over its misrepresentation of the US’ “one China” policy in the latest diplomatic salvo between the two countries over a bid by Taiwan to regain its observer status at the World Health Assembly, the decisionmaking body of the WHO. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to publicly misrepresent U.S. policy,” Department of State spokesman Ned Price wrote on Twitter. “The United States does not subscribe to the PRC’s ‘one China principle’ — we remain committed to our longstanding, bipartisan one China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, Three Joint Communiques, and
FATES LINKED: The US president said that sanctions on Russia over Ukraine must exact a ‘long-term price,’ because otherwise ‘what signal does that send to China?’ US President Joe Biden yesterday vowed that US forces would defend Taiwan militarily in the event of a Chinese attack in his strongest statement to date on the issue. Beijing is already “flirting with danger,” Biden said following talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, in which the pair agreed to monitor Chinese naval activity and joint Chinese-Russian exercises. Asked if Washington was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, he replied: “Yes.” “That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said. “We agreed with the ‘one China’ policy, we signed on to it ... but the idea that it can be
INFORMATION LEAKED: Documents from Xinjiang purportedly showed top leaders in Beijing calling for a forceful crackdown and even orders to shoot to kill Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday held a videoconference with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet as she visited Xinjiang during a mission overshadowed by fresh allegations of Uighur abuses and fears she is being used as a public relations tool. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been accused of detaining more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region as part of a years-long crackdown the US and lawmakers in other Western nations have labeled a “genocide.” China denies the allegations. Bachelet was expected to visit the cities of Urumqi and Kashgar on a six-day tour. The US
SUBTLE? While Biden said the US policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan had not changed, the group targeted China and Russia without naming them Leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US yesterday warned against attempts to “change the status quo by force,” as concerns grow about whether China could invade Taiwan. The issue of Taiwan loomed over a leadership meeting in Tokyo of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) nations — the US, Japan, Australia and India — who stressed their determination to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region in the face of an increasingly assertive China, although Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the group was not targeting any one country. The four leaders said in a joint statement issued after their talks