A survey that checks for COVID-19 antibodies using samples from donated blood is legal, and the randomly selected donors are informed and can opt out, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.
Some blood donors had questioned whether the survey breaches privacy and should require institutional review board approval, Chinese-language media reported yesterday.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), who is also the CECC spokesman, said the center on Feb. 20 announced that it has entrusted the Taiwan Blood Services Foundation to work with the CDC to conduct a COVID-19 serology antibody survey.
Photo courtesy of the Central Epidemic Command Center
The survey is conducted based on the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法) and the Regulations Governing the Implementation of the Epidemiological Surveillance and Advance-Alert System for Communicable Diseases (傳染病流行疫情監視及預警系統實施辦法), he said.
The foundation would randomly select 7,000 samples from blood donated from January to June this year, and test for antibodies for the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2, which could indicate prior infection, Lo said.
The survey is a legitimate part of routine disease monitoring, not a research project, so it does not need approval by an institutional review board, he said.
The survey has an “opt out” mechanism, he said, adding that donors whose blood had been randomly selected would be informed and have the option to opt out of the testing.
Among the 2,400 blood bags donated in January and February that were selected for the survey, 24 donors chose to opt out, Lo said.
The randomly selected blood samples are anonymized and given pseudonyms before they are tested for antibodies, so the results cannot be linked back to individual donors, who also cannot be informed of the result, he said.
As some people questioned why the center did not inform them beforehand, Lo said the donors are informed before their blood is used for the test.
Not all donors of the more than 1 million blood bags expected to be donated in the six months would be informed, he said, adding that the foundation feared that it might slow down the donation process.
The center is grateful to most of the 2,400 blood donors who were informed about the test and agreed to their blood sample being used, he said, adding that the donations make it possible to monitor the infection situation in local communities as it changes.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its