China and the WHO are in the best positions to predict how the COVID-19 pandemic will develop, but most people do not trust Beijing and the WHO remains muted, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday in response to queries by a foreign delegate.
During the Central Epidemic Command Center’s (CECC) daily news conference, Chen, who heads the center, shared a discussion he had with foreign representatives in Taiwan during a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that morning.
He briefed them on Taiwan’s quarantine policy and next-stage border control measures, Chen said, adding that they expressed respect for the policies the nation had implemented.
Photo: AFP
One foreign representative asked him when the global outbreak might peak, but he told them that he could not make a forecast, Chen said.
“While we can see certain changes and trends, a definite end is not in view,” he said.
Only two parties can make such a prediction — China and the WHO, he said.
China has reported the world’s most confirmed cases and knows the most about how the disease arose, but its statements are not trusted by most people, Chen said.
The WHO can also make a judgement, yet it remains muted on the issue, despite having many health experts and a lot of documentation, he said.
His remarks about China and the WHO found agreement among the representatives, he said.
While Taiwan is not in a position to predict the disease’s future, the government would prepare as well as it could with a worst-case scenario in mind, he said.
Although Chen did not name any Chinese or WHO members at the news conference, Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), an epidemiologist by training, on Wednesday criticized WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and on Thursday said that the world health body’s declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic was “too late.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement yesterday said that the delegates were from nearly 60 foreign countries and international organizations, and the meeting was attended by Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and other officials.
Invited by Wu to conduct the briefing, Chen Shih-chung spoke about Taiwan’s border quarantine measures and travel warning standards, and said that the measures would be constantly updated according to the global situation, the statement said.
They lauded Taiwan’s effective and proactive action in containing the disease, its complete and flexible complementary measures, and its willingness to help those in need and share its successes with the world, the ministry said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS