Taiwan is aiming to ease its strict COVID-19 quarantine policy from next month as it needs to gradually resume normal life and reopen to the world, the government said yesterday.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began two years ago, Taiwan has succeeded in keeping reported cases below 20,000, having enforced a blanket two-week quarantine for everyone arriving in the nation, even as large parts of the rest of the world have reopened.
Speaking at a meeting with senior health officials, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said that even though there could be further domestic infections, the government was “quite confident” in its disease prevention measures.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
“The government must also take into account livelihoods and economic development, gradually return to normal life and step out to the world,” the Executive Yuan cited Su as saying.
On the precondition that there are sufficient medical supplies and preparations, and that the vaccination rate continues to rise, Su said that he had asked the Central Epidemic Command Center to “consider whether reasonable and appropriate adjustments” should be made to the quarantine and entry policy for businesspeople.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that it would aim to cut the quarantine period from 14 days to 10 days before the middle of next month, confident that it could detect any infections within that period with testing.
“Basically, we can relax epidemic prevention” measures, Chen said.
Asked whether quarantine could be done away with completely before the summer holidays, Chen said: “The possibility is not high.”
About 30 percent of the nation’s 23.5 million people have now had a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine, a figure that is gradually rising, and the government has said that it wants to get that to 50 percent before easing entry requirements.
Taiwan has never gone into full lockdown during the pandemic and has never closed its borders, although arrivals have generally been limited to Taiwanese and foreign resident certificate holders.
Chen said business travelers would be able to return and would have to do the same 10-day quarantine, but he could not offer a time frame on allowing tourists back in.
The center is dealing with a handful of new domestic COVID-19 cases per day, all as a result of the more infectious Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.
Officials have said they are confident they can contain those outbreaks.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS