The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) for COVID-19 is expected to be dissolved next month, along with the reclassification of the disease from a category 5 to a category 4 notifiable communicable disease, Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) said yesterday.
As Japan has announced that it would lift all remaining COVID-19 border measures on May 8 and US President Joe Biden has said he would end the nation’s COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has lately often been asked when the CECC would be disbanded.
At a meeting of the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lai Hui-yuan (賴惠員) asked if adjustments to COVID-19 designated wards and infection control measures in hospitals would be made this week, as well as the ministry’s plans for reclassifying COVID-19 and disbanding the CECC.
Photo: CNA
Hsueh said the CECC would soon announce when COVID-19 designated wards would end.
As for dissolving the CECC, the ministry is discussing details with the Executive Yuan, but it is likely to be implemented next month, as it has said earlier, and in tandem with the reclassification of COVID-19 as a notifiable communicable disease, Hsueh said.
After the details and schedule are decided, the Executive Yuan would make the announcement, he added.
Shortly after the emergence of COVID-19 in late 2019, the disease was on Jan. 15, 2020, listed as a category 5 notifiable communicable disease.
On Jan. 20 that year, the CECC was established as a level 3 unit, upgraded to a level 2 units on Jan. 23, 2020, and to its current level 1 on Feb. 27, 2020.
Separately, former Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) on Tuesday evening booked an entire theater and invited disease prevention officials who were involved in the fight against SARS in 2003 and CECC officials who battled COVID-19 in the past three years to watch a movie titled Eye of the Storm (疫起), which tells the story of a hospital that was shut down during the SARS pandemic.
Former minister of health and welfare and former CECC head Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said the experiences learned from fighting SARS and COVID-19 can be used to think about what the nation could do when faced with new diseases in the future.
He said he would especially like to thank the Executive Yuan’s disease prevention chief adviser Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳), who played an important role in fighting SARS, for always providing professional insights and suggestions for the CECC, enabling the team to set up science-based guidelines.
Writing about his thoughts after seeing the movie, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝), who heads the CECC, said on Facebook that those who are willing to take risks and go above and beyond the call of duty to take care and save other people should be respected and praised, but not everyone is able to do this and they should not be criticized if they cannot do so.
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