Public adherence to social distancing measures would be key to determining whether people would still be free to travel domestically, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday.
Yesterday was the first workday after people returned from the four-day Children’s Day and Tomb Sweeping Day holiday.
Media reports showed that tourists in some popular travel destinations, such as Kenting (墾丁), failed to observe the Central Epidemic Command Center’s social distancing recommendations, which advised people to keep a distance of at least 1m when they are outdoors.
Photo: CNA
As the International Workers’ Day long weekend from May 1 to 3 is coming in three weeks, some have suggested that the government cancel the holiday to prevent crowds during the pandemic, or the nation’s efforts to effectively contain the spread of COVID-19 in the past two months would be wasted.
Asked if canceling the Workers’ Day weekend would be another heavy blow to domestic tourism, Lin said that preventing the spread of the disease remained the government’s top priority.
The ministry had ensured that travelers comply with the government’s disease-prevention policy during the past holiday, including wearing masks and having their temperature taken.
“Visitors to the 13 national scenic areas and 25 amusement parks supervised by the Tourism Bureau were down 50 percent compared with the same period last year. If you look at the usage rate of the parking space in amusement parks, except for the 30 to 40 percent at Lipao Resort and 20 to 30 percent at Janfusun Fancyworld the rest had a usage rate of less than 10 percent,” he said.
People can enjoy their holiday outdoors and feel just as relaxed when they adhere to disease-prevention policies, including observing social distancing, wearing masks, visiting less-crowded areas and avoiding peak travel time, Lin said.
The next two weeks would be a critical period to gauge whether people had strictly followed official disease-prevention measures during the holiday, he said.
“If the answer is yes, then we might still be free to travel domestically during long weekends. If people failed to restrain themselves and subsequently caused the virus to spread further, we could all be grounded,” Lin added.
Capping the number of people visiting a scenic area or entering a hotel is worth considering, he said, adding that hotels or travel service operators could follow this rule to avoid cluster infections in their facilities.
Most of the hoteliers across the nation had a pretty low occupancy rate during the holiday, except those in Kenting, Hualien, Taitung and Taichung’s Cingjing Farm (清境農場), he said.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS