A team of physicians and dentists in Hsinchu City have been hailed as an “exceptional example” for doctors to follow, after they collaborated on running a COVID-19 rapid testing station at the Hsinchu Science Park.
After a cluster of COVID-19 infections was reported at King Yuan Electronics on June 2, Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) voiced concern about the effect on production at the park.
On June 4, the rapid testing station was established and started testing workers in the park the following day.
Photo courtesy of the Hsinchu City Government
Over the next five days, it tested 5,213 people.
Hsinchu City Medical Association chairman Chiu Kuo-hua (邱國華) gathered more than 120 medical professionals, including 76 physicians, 43 dentists and seven traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, to operate the station. Chiu required all to have been vaccinated against the disease at least two weeks prior, and to undergo training in COVID-19 testing.
Chen Chih-cheng (陳志成), who trained the team, said his goal was to prepare them to identify people with latent infections.
Dentists were recruited because of their experience testing for the flu, and because SARS-CoV-2 is most highly concentrated in the nose and throat of an infected person, Chen said.
“We taught the dentists what they needed to know about the structure of the nose and throat, and about collecting samples for COVID-19 tests,” he said. “After they did it a few times they were able to instruct other doctors.”
Chiu recorded the training process he used for the dentists with the hope of it being used as training material for testing stations elsewhere in Taiwan.
“Hopefully, dentists will be seen as a valuable resource in the fight against disease,” he said.
Hsinchu City Dental Association chairman Lan Hung-wen (藍鴻文) said that Hsinchu’s dentists are known to have a good rapport with the city’s physicians, which is why they quickly volunteered to work at the testing station when it was announced.
“For them I think it was this idea that they had to come together to save their city,” he said.
The station also relieved some of the burden on the city’s hospitals, and enabled those who were concerned about going to a hospital out of fear of infection to have another choice for testing, he said.
Hsinchu has also established other rapid testing centers, and is offering to test on-site at factories, Lin said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods