For now, people are not banned from eating and drinking on trains, despite the rise in locally transmitted cases of COVID-19, Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday.
“On Sunday, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) announced that the nation would remain on a level 2 COVID-19 alert until at least Jan. 24. So we will follow the center’s disease prevention guidelines for passengers on public transport systems,” Wang said.
However, bus and train depots have been asked to disinfect facilities more frequently, he said.
Photo: CNA
The center’s new policy — which requires travelers entering Taiwan on long-haul flights to take a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test immediately upon arrival — somewhat eases the burden on cleaners and other workers at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, and lowers their risk of contracting the virus, Wang said.
On Tuesday, 58 of 625 international arrivals at the Taoyuan airport tested positive for COVID-19, a positivity rate of 9.28 percent, while 30 of the 58 confirmed cases came from the US, CECC data showed.
Yesterday morning, 16 of 287 international arrivals at the Taoyuan airport tested positive, the center said.
Yesterday, Victor Wang (王必勝), the center’s on-site commander at the Taoyuan airport, told reporters that, after the chaos of Tuesday, personnel made changes to facilitate the PCR testing.
As more air travelers are expected to arrive in the next three days, the center seeks to shorten the waiting time for PCR test results, Victor Wang said.
“We have seen a tremendous improvement in the speed at which we screen samples gathered from inbound travelers and deliver travelers who test positive to hospitals,” he said.
“On Tuesday, it took us almost 20 minutes to just double check the names of passengers to be tested. We have shortened the time to two minutes and should gradually be able to reach the goal we set for ourselves,” he said.
The airport has 101 machines to process test samples, up from 20 on Tuesday, which should be enough to meet the demand in the next three days, he said.
Before the center’s new policy, travelers would leave for their quarantine facility in one to three hours, but on Tuesday, the time increased to about four hours, Civil Aeronautics Administration Director-General Lin Kuo-hsien (林國顯) told the Transportation Committee meeting.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said that the Taoyuan airport should have had enough testing machines before the policy took effect, given the large number of Taiwanese returning home for the Lunar New Year holiday.
The airport management failed to adequately prepare and was slow to respond to the chaos, Hung said.
The infection clusters that began with airport workers showed that the facility lacked a proper cleaning protocol and failed to provide cleaners with adequate protective gear, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-tse (李昆澤) said, adding that the airport should stipulate new guidelines for cleaners.
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